Art: Awkward, Helpless Fellow

Almost too excited to speak last week was Director Alfred H. Barr of Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. Ever since the founding of the Modern Museum six years ago and its liberal priming with Rockefeller funds, its loan exhibitions have been of more & more artistic significance. Last week perspiring truckmen trundled through its ornate marble doors the makings of possibly the most important show the institution has ever held—45 paintings and 46 drawings of the late great Vincent van Gogh. From U. S. museums and private collections Director Barr hopes to borrow almost as many more to round out his No. 1 U. S. exhibit of van Gogh’s work next month.

For weeks this summer Director Barr toured The Netherlands, arranging to borrow the pictures he needed from Dutchman van Gogh’s nephew, now a prosperous Amsterdam engineer, and from the Kröller-Müller Foundation at Wassenaar, owner of the most important van Gogh collection in the world. Though Nephew van Gogh was willing to lend his pictures, the Foundation first went through a spasm of nervous hesitation.

Like Philadelphia’s Tycoon Albert C. Barnes (Argyrol), Dutch Tycoon W. H. Müller (copper, steamboats) is one of the world’s most eminent collectors of modern paintings. Really assembled by Mevrouw Müller, the Kröller-Müller collection of nearly 1,000 pictures contains 98 of some 700 paintings produced by Vincent van Gogh in his lifetime. They have announced that on their death their collection and their huge estate near The Hague, where it is housed, will be turned over to the public, that a large museum will be built on the grounds. Created was a Foundation, with a Dutch Cabinet minister on the board, which now holds title to the pictures. At the last minute, threats of war made the Foundation hesitate to send such valuable semi-public property out of the country. Finally after much persuasion by Director Barr the directors relented and their van Goghs, insured for $1,000,000, were loadedon the Statendam, forwarded to Manhattan.

Among U. S. collectors contributing to the Modern Museum’s exhibition are the Chicago Art Institute, the Pennsylvania Museum, Adolph Lewisohn, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr., Mrs. William Averell Harriman, Conductor Josef Stransky, A. Conger Goodyear and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Winterbotham of Burlington, Vt.

The tradition of the starving genius recognized only after his death is a phenomenon limited largely to the end of the 19th Century and the beginnings of modern art. The great painters of the Renaissance were without exception prosperous men who generally made, if they did not keep, large fortunes. Currently, able artists as far apart as Philip de László and Pablo Picasso are wealthy men. But poor crazy Vincent van Gogh sold only two paintings in his life, received $4 for the first, $80 for the second. He also was able to sell about 20 drawings at an average price of $1.25 each. Today his brilliant landscapes fetch as much as $50,000 apiece.

None of the founders of modern art has been richer game for the journalist than Vincent van Gogh. Within the past two years two lives of him have been best sellers, one a novel, Lust for Life by Irving Stone,* another a scholarly biography by able Art Critic Julius Meier-Graefe (TIME, Dec. 11, 1933).

Violent-tempered son of a Dutch parson, Vincent van Gogh was first ambitious to enter the Church. After an unsuccessful attempt to fit into the sedate art firm of Goupil et Cie, he finally got himself made a lay reader, worked as a missionary in Belgium until his passion for giving away his money, his clothes, even his bed, ended in his dismissal. He began to draw, painfully teaching himself as he went along, sending his sketches to his only friend, his younger brother Theo. Though a moderately successful dealer, Theo van Gogh kept himself poor supporting Vincent, buying him paints, oils, canvas.

Artistically, it was not until after he left Paris, where he had made a footling attempt to imitate the Impressionists, and settled in the warm sunlight of Arles that Vincent van Gogh found himself. Living with Artist Paul Gaugin (who was yet to make his name in the South Seas), van Gogh’s mind and palette went off in pinwheels and rockets of reckless color. He painted sunflowers and fishing boats, postmen, prostitutes, and frequently himself (see cut p. 23) with an exuberance that makes most van Gogh canvases seem ready to leap off the wall. His first detention in an insane asylum occurred after he cut off his right ear, presented it to a prostitute to whom he was unable to give a five-franc tip.

Later he seemed better and was released in care of a doctor and his brother Theo. On July 27, 1890 he picked up a revolver, started to threaten the doctor but wandered away and shot himself clumsily in the stomach. Death did not come until after long, painful hours. His last words to Brother Theo: “Did you ever know such an awkward and helpless fellow as me?”

* Longmans, Green ($2.50).