19/04/2023
"Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Moulin à Poivre)" (Paris. April 1887) [F349]
By Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
oil on canvas; 55 x 38.5 cm (21 1/2 x 15 1/4 in.)
Private Collection
Overview:
"In 1906, the year after the Amsterdam show at the Stedelijk Museum, Johanna gave the picture to the painter Isaac Israëls, the man who had been her lover following her husband's death. He gave her a portrait in exchange. Following Israels's death in 1934, the increasingly valuable painting passed through more than one collection before Charles Engelhard, the flamboyant president of the Engelhard Minerals and Chemicals Corporation, bought it in 1958.
In June 1886, Vincent and Theo moved to an apartment at 54, rue Lepic, which overlooked the three windmills of Montmartre. From west to east: the Moulin de Blute-Fin, the Moulin Radet, the Moulin à Poivre (also known as the Moulin Debray).
The windmills were no longer functioning by then, and instead the area had been turned into a popular social hub, the famed Moulin de La Galette.
The only two remaining windmills today are the Radet and the Blute-Fin, the latter’s name from the verb 'bluter' which means “to sieve” or 'to sift'. These windmills, together with gardens and farm, made up the Moulin de la Galette.
"This painting is a beautifully-worked example of Van Gogh’s new manner of painting in the wake of his exposure to the Impressionists in Paris. The colour palette is lighter, fresher, and more pure in tonality, and the artist has abandoned the heavily-impastoed manner of his Dutch works in favour of a more delicate touche (brushstroke), which in some places allows the white of the canvas to show through.
Even in more thickly-painted areas, such as in the foreground, the palette remains bright and clear. Van Gogh may have been introduced by his friend Bernard to the work of the Neo-Impressionists Seurat and Signac, whose aesthetic is ultimately derived from the colour theories of Charles Blanc and Eugène Chevreul. The Neo-Impressionists favoured an 'optical mix' of colour, painting in small dots of pigment so that the individual hues are mixed by the viewer’s eye rather than on the palette.
Van Gogh was impressed, but adapted the technique to be less restrictive, and began layering slightly longer strokes and dashes of complementary colour on his canvases. These hatched, parallel strokes are characteristic of his mature painting style. For Van Gogh, the aim of colour was to evoke an emotional response, whereas for the Impressionists the interest lay exclusively in the visual qualities of the surface. Vincent was optimistic about the wealth of possibilities to be found in colour, writing to Theo in 1888 to exclaim,
'But the painter of the future is a COLOURIST SUCH AS THERE HASN'T BEEN THERE BEFORE' (emphasis on the original) - Arles, 4 May 1888 http://bit.ly/1SU7e1k
The figure in this painting is based on a drawing of a Digger made in November 1882, in The Hague [F908]. At the time, Van Gogh wrote to his friend Anthon van Rappard (1858-1892),
'I have drawn the digger in 12 different poses and am still looking for better ones. He is a marvellously fine model, a true veteran digger'. - 24 November 1882 http://bit.ly/2ukNQ8p
There are now only three known drawings of these original dozen, all in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The drawing used for the present painting is the most highly worked-up of the three, which suggests that van Gogh found it the most successful composition. Interestingly, although by 1886 Van Gogh’s paintings had moved away from his early Dutch manner, his landscape drawings did not begin to exhibit a livelier and lighter touch until the following year.
A drawing of The Blute-Fin Mill dating from February/March 1887 is very fine in its draughtsmanship, yet comparatively staid in handling (The Phillips Collection, Washington; [F1396a]).
Following Vincent’s death, this painting belonged to Johanna Gesina Bonger (1862-1925), who became Vincent’s sister-in-law when she married Theo van Gogh on 17 April 1889. Johanna was widowed on 25 January 1891, scarcely six months after Vincent’s death from self-inflicted injuries on 29 July 1890; Theo had suffered a complete collapse in October of 1890 and never recovered.
As heir and executor of the estates of both brothers, Johanna suddenly found herself responsible for Theo’s Paris flat, which was crammed full of paintings, and for a cupboard full of letters from Vincent, with which Theo had entrusted her. Her brother, Andries Bonger, who was originally responsible for introducing her to Theo, made an inventory of all of the paintings now in Johanna’s possession. (Andries was also a friend of Vincent’s, and the two corresponded; Vincent called him “André” in letters.)
Near the bottom of page 4, listed as number 35 on the inventory, is the Moulin de la Galette. A short time later, Johanna left Paris for her native Holland, along with her infant son (named Vincent, after his uncle) and almost the entirety of Vincent’s painted and graphic oeuvre.
Johanna van Gogh was a canny businesswoman, and she was determined to bring Vincent’s paintings to the attention of the critics and connoisseurs. Among the artist’s earliest champions was the dealer Ambroise Vollard, who began enthusiastically buying any pictures he could get his hands on. Vollard first contacted Johanna in 1895, and though she was initially hesitant to cooperate with the powerful dealer, they began corresponding with increasing frequency.
In early 1896, Johanna organised two dedicated exhibitions in Holland: one in Groningen in February, where 101 works were shown, and a second in Rotterdam in March, where 52 pictures were shown. In September of that year, Vollard was finally permitted to exhibit 56 paintings by Van Gogh at his new premises on Rue Lafitte in Paris. Johanna allowed Vollard to purchase a few works, but she deliberately marked some of the best pictures (and those specifically referred to by Vincent in his letters) as 'not for sale', in order to generate interest and curiosity among collectors.
Further exhibitions followed, and Johanna made a point of working with a number of different dealers, so as not to form a dependency on any individual or gallery. In July and August of 1905, a major exhibition held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam helped to cement Vincent’s reputation as a vital force in Post-Impressionist painting. The show included 474 paintings and drawings in total, and was both organised and funded by Johanna herself.
The Moulin de la Galette bears a label on the reverse referring to the picture’s inclusion in the exhibition. Johanna also understood that the close relationship between Theo and Vincent was interesting and relevant, and undertook the monumental chore of translating all of the letters and organising their publication in 1914.
The Moulin de la Galette was given by Johanna to the painter Isaac Israëls (1865-1934), a Dutch artist associated with the Amsterdam Impressionist movement. Between 1894 and 1897, Israëls was romantically involved with the newly-widowed Johanna van Gogh, having first been introduced to Theo when the latter was working at the Goupil gallery in the Hague. (Israëls was aquainted with Vincent as well; a letter written by Vincent in July of 1883 quotes Israëls; see letter 361.)
Israëls sold much of his work through Goupil. A note written by Johanna and Theo’s son Vincent Willem suggests that Johanna gave several paintings to Israëls in exchange for portraits. In addition to the Moulin de la Galette, Israëls owned the 'Wheatfield with Auvers in the background' [F801], Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva) and the 'Olive Trees' [FF711]; Private Collection).
In 1904, Israëls moved to Paris, where he lived at 10 Rue Alfred Stevens, near both Montmartre and the studio of Toulouse-Lautrec. Israëls painted his own view of the Moulin de la Galette, a work that is distinctly different in feel to Van Gogh’s painting, with its focus on an elegant young couple seated at a table outdoors. (1905-6). He also painted a portrait of Johanna van Gogh (see the portrait http://bit.ly/2sj149r ).
In 1919, Israëls had a number of paintings on loan from Johanna, among them the Sunflowers that was eventually purchased by the National Gallery. (There is a portrait of a woman reading by Israëls in which the sitter is posed in front of van Gogh’s now-iconic painting; see the painting http://bit.ly/2sjKDtl )
After the affair ended, Johanna married another painter, Johan Cohen Gosschalk, in 1901. When she was widowed for the second time in 1912, she changed her name back to Van Gogh."
