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Um Par de Amantes, Arles, França (A Pair of Lovers / Eglogue en Provence) - Vincent van Gogh
Arles - França
Coleção privada
OST - 32x22 - 1888
Painted in March 1888, the month after van Gogh arrived in Arles, the present work is an intimate depiction of two lovers walking along the bank of a river. It once formed the central motif of a larger composition depicting a pair of lovers walking along a canal path towards the Pont de Réginelle, known locally as the Pont Langlois after the man who operated it. Van Gogh attempted several versions of this composition, in most of which the scene is shown in daylight with the bridge set against a blue sky; however, in one of them Van Gogh wanted to incorporate the brilliant disk of the setting sun. He wrote about this project to his friend, the painter Emile Bernard on March 18: ‘At the top of this letter I’m sending you a little croquis of a study that’s preoccupying me as to how to make something of it – sailors coming back with their sweethearts towards the town, which projects the strange silhouette of its drawbridge against a huge yellow sun’ (quoted in Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten & Nienke Bakker (eds.), op. cit., 2009, letter no. 587, p. 28). He discussed the work again in a letter to his brother Theo several days later, on March 21 or 22: ‘Rain and wind these past few days, I've worked at home on the study of which I’ve made a croquis in Bernard's letter. My aim was to give it colours like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines’ (ibid., letter no. 588, p. 30).
This bad weather was to prove the artist’s undoing. A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) is all that survives of the composition with the setting sun shown in the letter to Bernard; Van Gogh wrote on the 25th March that he had abandoned the work after the weather stopped him painting in situ and his efforts in the studio had failed. However, he evidently felt that the central motif of the pair of lovers was successful and decided to preserve it. In considering this, the Van Gogh Museum note the ‘vigorous execution in terms of brushwork and colour’ and the fact that the rich impasto in the figure of the woman anticipates that of later paintings in Arles (Louis van Tilborgh, ‘Art historical report’, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2007). Certainly, the figures achieve van Gogh’s stated aim of producing ‘colours like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines’ and in this respect encapsulate what the artist was working towards in this crucial period of his career.
In the sketch incorporated in the letter to Bernard, van Gogh indicated the colours he planned to apply to the oil, probably taking into account the colour theories that played an important role in his œuvre. The colours used in A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) indeed follow those indicated in the sketch, with the exception of the ochre path which was in the sketch indicated as ‘rose’. In the artist's original conception of the scene, the lovers would have been portrayed walking along the canal that runs from Port-du-Bouc to Arles, towards the Pont de Langlois. Located just south of Arles, the bridge, with its technical finesse and dynamic structure, had so fascinated the artist during the spring, that he depicted it in several oils and drawings, although no other scenes include a pair of lovers.
The luminous, highly contrasted palette of A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) is characteristic of Van Gogh’s paintings executed in Arles, and reflects not only the new quality of light he encountered in the South of France, but also his fascination with Japanese prints. The influence of these prints can also be seen in the compositional structure of the present work, with the path intersecting the canvas as a powerful diagonal. As Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger write: ‘Van Gogh was looking for Japan in the south. And he found it, too – abstracting ever more powerfully from the circumstances of his own existence and longing for that oriental paradise with the same fervour as he expressed in his colours. The months leading up to his breakdown were informed by the imagined conception of that better world promised by Japan: van Gogh was reaching for a utopia, trying to make it concrete reality by painting it […]. Later he was to recall the childlike anticipation that had seized hold of him in rueful tones: “I can still remember vividly how excited I became that winter when travelling from Paris to Arles. How I was constantly on the lookout to see if we had reached Japan yet” […]. His Japanese notions continued to hold him in thrall for the time being: “I don’t need any Japanese prints”, he wrote to his sister (in Letter W7), “because I always say that I am in Japan right here. And that I therefore only have to open my eyes and paint whatever is in front of my nose and makes an impression on me”’ (I. F. Walther & R. Metzer, op. cit., 2001, pp. 321-325).
The presence of figures within a landscape may also have been inspired by Japanese examples, although the identity of the man and woman as lovers would become a recurring motif in the artist’s work. Six months later, van Gogh would paint a number of important works depicting couples and lovers in the public gardens at Arles, in an area known as the Jardin du poète. More famously, the foreground of his Starry Night over the Rhône would also include a pair of lovers admiring the starlit river. The present painting prefigures the artist's absorption in the study of those figures and the positioning of himself – the artist – as outsider to their union. Interestingly, the final state of this composition, with the lovers shown in close up, has the opposite effect; where distance excludes the viewer, proximity draws us into their world. The delightfully vibrant colouration of A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) – with the bold reds of the woman's shawl and skirt and the sky blues of the man's shirt – imbues the scene with great positivity and warmth that is part of the work’s charm.
Indeed, the term 'eglogue' in the title derives from the Classical poetic form made famous by the Roman poet Virgil, to describe a pastoral idyll. The title seems to have originated when the work first appeared at auction in 1911 as part of the collection of French playwright Henri Bernstein. It was repeated in Jakob-Baart de la Faille’s 1928 catalogue raisonné and since then the work has been known by a variety of names, including A Pair of Lovers which has been adopted by the Van Gogh Museum. Both titles encapsulate the achievements of this work. The lovers here act as two rhyming forms, two bold vertical presences between the lush green diagonals of the water and the grass and set against the vibrant ochre of the path. Dating from a key period in the artist’s career, A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) is an enduring image of love and intimacy vibrantly rendered in van Gogh's distinctive and newly matured style.
According to the Van Gogh Museum, ‘new information has been found and it points out that the [present] painting belonged in 1898 to Joseph M. Ginoux (1835-1906) and Marie Ginoux-Julien (1848-1911), owners of the 'Café de la gare' in Arles at 30 Place Lamartine. Van Gogh rented a room in their café and restaurant between May and September 1888, and he became friendly with especially Marie. The Ginoux owned many paintings by Van Gogh, and one of his works in their collection was according to a note of 1898 ‘Marin et sa femme au bord de la mer'’, as the present work was known at the time’ (Louis van Tilborgh, ‘Art historical report’ by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, which accompanies the present work). The Ginoux family acquired their extraordinary collection of works by Van Gogh during the time in which the artist lodged with them. Some paintings were received as gifts, others had been left behind with the artist’s furniture for safekeeping. They subsequently sold many of these works through a local art dealer called Henri Laget who supplied Ambroise Vollard in Paris. The first known public appearance of the present work was at auction at Hôtel Drouot in Paris in 1911. Its owner at the time was the French playwright Henri Bernstein (1876-1953), who at this auction sold a large part of his collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art.
Coleção privada
OST - 32x22 - 1888
Painted in March 1888, the month after van Gogh arrived in Arles, the present work is an intimate depiction of two lovers walking along the bank of a river. It once formed the central motif of a larger composition depicting a pair of lovers walking along a canal path towards the Pont de Réginelle, known locally as the Pont Langlois after the man who operated it. Van Gogh attempted several versions of this composition, in most of which the scene is shown in daylight with the bridge set against a blue sky; however, in one of them Van Gogh wanted to incorporate the brilliant disk of the setting sun. He wrote about this project to his friend, the painter Emile Bernard on March 18: ‘At the top of this letter I’m sending you a little croquis of a study that’s preoccupying me as to how to make something of it – sailors coming back with their sweethearts towards the town, which projects the strange silhouette of its drawbridge against a huge yellow sun’ (quoted in Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten & Nienke Bakker (eds.), op. cit., 2009, letter no. 587, p. 28). He discussed the work again in a letter to his brother Theo several days later, on March 21 or 22: ‘Rain and wind these past few days, I've worked at home on the study of which I’ve made a croquis in Bernard's letter. My aim was to give it colours like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines’ (ibid., letter no. 588, p. 30).
This bad weather was to prove the artist’s undoing. A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) is all that survives of the composition with the setting sun shown in the letter to Bernard; Van Gogh wrote on the 25th March that he had abandoned the work after the weather stopped him painting in situ and his efforts in the studio had failed. However, he evidently felt that the central motif of the pair of lovers was successful and decided to preserve it. In considering this, the Van Gogh Museum note the ‘vigorous execution in terms of brushwork and colour’ and the fact that the rich impasto in the figure of the woman anticipates that of later paintings in Arles (Louis van Tilborgh, ‘Art historical report’, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2007). Certainly, the figures achieve van Gogh’s stated aim of producing ‘colours like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines’ and in this respect encapsulate what the artist was working towards in this crucial period of his career.
In the sketch incorporated in the letter to Bernard, van Gogh indicated the colours he planned to apply to the oil, probably taking into account the colour theories that played an important role in his œuvre. The colours used in A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) indeed follow those indicated in the sketch, with the exception of the ochre path which was in the sketch indicated as ‘rose’. In the artist's original conception of the scene, the lovers would have been portrayed walking along the canal that runs from Port-du-Bouc to Arles, towards the Pont de Langlois. Located just south of Arles, the bridge, with its technical finesse and dynamic structure, had so fascinated the artist during the spring, that he depicted it in several oils and drawings, although no other scenes include a pair of lovers.
The luminous, highly contrasted palette of A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) is characteristic of Van Gogh’s paintings executed in Arles, and reflects not only the new quality of light he encountered in the South of France, but also his fascination with Japanese prints. The influence of these prints can also be seen in the compositional structure of the present work, with the path intersecting the canvas as a powerful diagonal. As Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger write: ‘Van Gogh was looking for Japan in the south. And he found it, too – abstracting ever more powerfully from the circumstances of his own existence and longing for that oriental paradise with the same fervour as he expressed in his colours. The months leading up to his breakdown were informed by the imagined conception of that better world promised by Japan: van Gogh was reaching for a utopia, trying to make it concrete reality by painting it […]. Later he was to recall the childlike anticipation that had seized hold of him in rueful tones: “I can still remember vividly how excited I became that winter when travelling from Paris to Arles. How I was constantly on the lookout to see if we had reached Japan yet” […]. His Japanese notions continued to hold him in thrall for the time being: “I don’t need any Japanese prints”, he wrote to his sister (in Letter W7), “because I always say that I am in Japan right here. And that I therefore only have to open my eyes and paint whatever is in front of my nose and makes an impression on me”’ (I. F. Walther & R. Metzer, op. cit., 2001, pp. 321-325).
The presence of figures within a landscape may also have been inspired by Japanese examples, although the identity of the man and woman as lovers would become a recurring motif in the artist’s work. Six months later, van Gogh would paint a number of important works depicting couples and lovers in the public gardens at Arles, in an area known as the Jardin du poète. More famously, the foreground of his Starry Night over the Rhône would also include a pair of lovers admiring the starlit river. The present painting prefigures the artist's absorption in the study of those figures and the positioning of himself – the artist – as outsider to their union. Interestingly, the final state of this composition, with the lovers shown in close up, has the opposite effect; where distance excludes the viewer, proximity draws us into their world. The delightfully vibrant colouration of A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) – with the bold reds of the woman's shawl and skirt and the sky blues of the man's shirt – imbues the scene with great positivity and warmth that is part of the work’s charm.
Indeed, the term 'eglogue' in the title derives from the Classical poetic form made famous by the Roman poet Virgil, to describe a pastoral idyll. The title seems to have originated when the work first appeared at auction in 1911 as part of the collection of French playwright Henri Bernstein. It was repeated in Jakob-Baart de la Faille’s 1928 catalogue raisonné and since then the work has been known by a variety of names, including A Pair of Lovers which has been adopted by the Van Gogh Museum. Both titles encapsulate the achievements of this work. The lovers here act as two rhyming forms, two bold vertical presences between the lush green diagonals of the water and the grass and set against the vibrant ochre of the path. Dating from a key period in the artist’s career, A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence) is an enduring image of love and intimacy vibrantly rendered in van Gogh's distinctive and newly matured style.
According to the Van Gogh Museum, ‘new information has been found and it points out that the [present] painting belonged in 1898 to Joseph M. Ginoux (1835-1906) and Marie Ginoux-Julien (1848-1911), owners of the 'Café de la gare' in Arles at 30 Place Lamartine. Van Gogh rented a room in their café and restaurant between May and September 1888, and he became friendly with especially Marie. The Ginoux owned many paintings by Van Gogh, and one of his works in their collection was according to a note of 1898 ‘Marin et sa femme au bord de la mer'’, as the present work was known at the time’ (Louis van Tilborgh, ‘Art historical report’ by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, which accompanies the present work). The Ginoux family acquired their extraordinary collection of works by Van Gogh during the time in which the artist lodged with them. Some paintings were received as gifts, others had been left behind with the artist’s furniture for safekeeping. They subsequently sold many of these works through a local art dealer called Henri Laget who supplied Ambroise Vollard in Paris. The first known public appearance of the present work was at auction at Hôtel Drouot in Paris in 1911. Its owner at the time was the French playwright Henri Bernstein (1876-1953), who at this auction sold a large part of his collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art.
Nota do blog: Acima imagem da carta de Vincent van Gogh para Emile Bernard, Arles, 18/03/1888.
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