Discovered: American couple buys a picture by Van Gogh s friend Edmund Brooke for $45 in antiques shop theartnewspaper.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theartnewspaper.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
âWithout Jo there would have been no van Goghâ
The celebrated artistâs sister-in-law is finally being hailed as the person who brought his art to the world.
By Russell Shorto
May 14, 2021
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger became a tireless advocate for Vincent van Goghâs work after her husband Theoâs death in 1891. On the wall of her living room, circa 1909, are Henri Fantin-Latourâs Flowers and Vincent van Goghâs Vase of Honesty (1884).
Credit:Unknown photographer, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
Save
Normal text size
Very large text size
In 1885, a 22-year-old Dutch woman named Johanna Bonger met Theo van Gogh, the younger brother of the artist, who was then making a name for himself as an art dealer in Paris. History knows Theo as the steadier of the van Gogh brothers, the archetypal emotional anchor, who selflessly managed Vincentâs erratic path through life, but he had his share of impetuosity. He asked her to marry
Van Gogh’s Olive Grove (July 1889), Olive Trees (June 1889) and Olive Trees (June 1889) Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (photo: Rik Klein Gotink); Museum of Modern Art, New York (license: SCALA/Art Resource); and Minneapolis Institute of Art (William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 51.7)
The first exhibition to explore Vincent’s olive groves now has new dates. Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum was originally to have presented the show this summer, but it has been delayed because of Covid-19.
Van Gogh and the Olive Groves will instead start at the Dallas Museum of Art (17 October-6 February 2022) and then open at its Dutch venue next year (11 March-12 June 2022).
Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by Audm
To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times,
.
In 1885, a 22-year-old Dutch woman named Johanna Bonger met Theo van Gogh, the younger brother of the artist, who was then making a name for himself as an art dealer in Paris. History knows Theo as the steadier of the van Gogh brothers, the archetypal emotional anchor, who selflessly managed Vincent’s erratic path through life, but he had his share of impetuosity. He asked her to marry him after only two meetings.
Jo, as she called herself, was raised in a sober, middle-class family. Her father, the editor of a shipping newspaper that reported on things like the trade in coffee and spices from the Far East, imposed a code of propriety and emotional aloofness on his children. There is a Dutch maxim, “The tallest nail gets hammered down,” that the Bonger family seems to have taken as gospel. Jo had set herself up in a safely unexciting career as an English teac
Vincent van Gogh’s
Sunflowers will go on show today at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia. It will be the climax in the final room of the exhibition
In a message to Australians in the exhibition catalogue, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson singled out the show’s star painting and the pleasure of “having the soul lifted by the explosive yellows and greens of Van Gogh’s favourite and most famous
Sunflowers”.
Johnson, never one to forgo a cricketing joke, also reiterated that exchanges between the UK and Australia, cultural and otherwise, are nothing new: “We have codified all manner of sports, taught you the rules and then watched, somewhat bemused, as you taught us how to play.”