Van Gogh Takes The Stage

Paintings from the beginning and the end of the Dutch artist’s life do well, as Man Ray rides the Underground to New York

- Huon Mallalieu

VINCENT VAN GOGH is certainly having a moment. his museum in Amsterdam, which I have yet to revisit after its revamp, has been highly praised, and its current show ‘van Gogh and Japan’ (until June 24) is equally well reviewed. he never actually visited the east, but, like many of his generation, he was fascinated by Japanese art as the country emerged from centuries of cultural isolation and the evidence is very clear in his work.

Then, last week, one of his final landscapes sold at Christie’s inNeww York for a low-estimate but still remarkable price, $39,687,500 (£29,332,946). it was the 17¾in by 23¾in Vue de l’asile et de la Chapelle St Paul de Mausole (Saint-Rémy) (Fig 1), showing the asylum where the artist was a self-admitted patient for a year from May 1889. to begin with, he was not allowed to paint and then, for some time, only indoors. During this time, he produced a masterwork, The Starry Night with its swirling sky, as well as copies of, or rather variations on, themes by artists he admired, such as the Realists Breton and Courbet. eventually, in the autumn, he was allowed out for supervised walks and painting sessions and it was then that he painted the asylum and chapel. he was discharged in May 1890, but shot himself in July, just as he was attracting critical acclaim and the championship of his peers.