Vincent van Gogh - Van Gogh in Brabant

Poster:
Van Gogh in Brabant paintings and drawings from Etten and Nuenen
North Brabant Museum
03-11-87 - 10-01-88
Poster design Hans Bockting, printed by Waanders Zwolle

This magnificent exhibition of Vincent van Gogh originated in 1881 and in 1884-1885, when he lived and worked in Etten and Nuenen respectively. One hundred works by Van Gogh created in Brabant are reproduced here in color and discussed in detail. The authors contribute articles on the Van Gogh family, the Brabant countryside, and the socio-economic structure of Nuenen around 1880. Many images illustrate these extensive and very interesting articles, which shed new light on a great artist. In Etten, Vincent van Gogh continued his early career as an artist, which he had chosen in Belgium over evangelistic work among the miners of the Borinage. He had decided to become a painter of peasant life, in the tradition of the French artists Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton, whom he greatly admired. In search of a suitable place to work, he chose Etten because the Brabant countryside was familiar to him from his youth (Van Gogh was a born and bred Brabander) and because lodging with his parents was inexpensive. After working for several years in The Hague and Drenthe, where his choice of subject matter temporarily broadened to include fishermen and the common people in general, Van Gogh moved in with his parents in the parsonage of Nuenen in late 1883. There, he could rightfully call himself a painter of peasants. He drew, watercolored, and painted the weavers, farmers, and farm women indoors or in the fields, culminating in *The Potato Eaters*. The landscape of Nuenen and its surroundings, and the changing seasons, were close to his heart as the 'entourage' of this rural life. As for Van Gogh himself, he considered the paintings from Nuenen to be the beginning of his oeuvre, which he deemed good enough to present to a wider audience. However, that audience wanted nothing to do with his *The Potato Eaters* for the time being. This unique art book is edited by Prof. Dr. E. van Uitert and fits into the international series of publications covering the various periods in Van Gogh's work. Never before has such a complete and comprehensive overview of Van Gogh's formative years been published.