They is dead He has only survived Vincent by six months.. Life lost meaning without her soul brother, whom she always protected and supported. Johanna – Theo’s widow – has a one-year-old baby left, a flat in Paris, 200 paintings and 600 letters.
Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger is 28 years old, in 1891, when she is widowed. She must raise her son, whom they have named Vincent, after her uncle, the painter Vincent Van Gogh.. The artist has been a constant presence in the year and a half that she has been married to Theodorus Van Gogh. Her husband has sent her money, she has corresponded with him, she has always been aware of her older brother, that artist with an unstable character whom Johanna has barely seen four times in her life.
Johanna is an educated woman, she has been an English teacher, she is a Percy Shelley specialist, she even worked in the library of the British Museum before marrying Theo. She is an intelligent and determined woman who intends to bring her son forward. It is not easy: the canvases that she has inherited are worthless. Even Theo, who was an art dealer, couldn’t sell them.
Johanna decides to read the letters that Vincent wrote to Theo. There are many, more than 600. Discover a genius with a path full of obstacles. “A victory achieved after a lifetime of work and effort is worth more than a victory achieved earlier”, writes Vincent to Theo in 1878. You can still victory to be achieved, Johanna thinks, and sets off.
He moves to Bussum, 25 kilometers from Amsterdam, because news reaches him that Sunday rest is going to be implemented, he realizes that this change will give rise to a new business, because many workers will not know how to fill those idle Sundays. He sets up a guest house in the country, decorates it with the inherited paintings and begins the great task of his life: collect the work of Vincent Van Gogh to exhibit it and make it known to the world; and translate, order and publish the correspondence between the brothers so that his genius and benefactor are known.
unsaleable paintings
Johanna is responsible for Van Gogh being recognized today as one of the great masters of painting of all time. She rescued his work and valued it. She benefited from Theo’s experience as an art dealer-he sold works by Claude Monet and Paul Gauguinalthough he was not able to sell his own brother’s work: it did not seem ethical to him to involve the company in which he worked in a family matter.
“I have a goal in life. But I feel alone, ”Johanna noted in her diary when she became a widow, at age 28.
Johanna reads the letters between the brothers and decides to carry out the mission of getting her brother-in-law’s work appreciated. She does it for Theo and her son. “I have a goal in life -she noted in her diary-, but I feel alone”.
At first she was helped by the painters Jan Verkade and Paul Sérusier and friends of Vincent such as Eugène Boch. Anna Boch, Eugène’s sister, had bought one of the only three paintings that Van Gogh sold during his lifetime. Anna, who was also a painter, acquired in 1890 the red vineyard for 400 francs. The other paintings sold by Vincent are Clichy Bridgebought for 250 francs, according to the Boussod & Valadon account books, and a self-portrait purchased by London dealers Sulley & Lori.
All these sales are from the end of his life, a time of maximum production. The artist died on July 29, 1890 as a result of gunshot wounds: it seems that it was a suicide, although there are those who point to an accident. In the 30 months before his death, Vincent painted up to 500 works, sometimes even superimposing them on top of each other in frantic activity.
First exposition
The first thing Johanna did was locate paintings and retrieve them. She then insisted on showing them. In February 1892, she organized an exhibition in Amsterdam with drawings by Vincent Van Gogh at the Artists’ Association. It was a success. Johanna is amazed to hear praise for her brother-in-law’s work, something she was not used to.
“There are only two documented opinions favorable to Van Gogh’s work during the painter’s lifetime”, says Camilo Sánchez in Van Gogh’s widow, the novel dedicated to Johanna. One praise was pronounced by the painter JJ Isaacson at a seminar in Holland in 1888, and the other was signed by the poet Albert Aurier in an article in Le Mercure de Francein 1890.
Did no one else notice Van Gogh’s talent? Johanna knew that the works were good, and people like Monet or Gauguin said that Van Gogh was a genius, but it is normal for someone with that talent, who did such different things, to take a while to gain recognition. Johanna’s task was absolutely crucial, explains Wouter Van Der Veen, author of the book Van Goh in Auvers, his last days.
Johanna inherited 200 paintings from her brother-in-law that nobody wanted. Her son created the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation in 1960
It was Johanna who carried out what Vincent (who had worked as an art dealer before devoting himself only to painting) proposed to Theo in his letters: “Show a lot, sell what is necessary and save the great pieces so that they reach the museums” , a whole marketing strategy.
cry with the cards
Johanna visits important Dutch dealers such as Wisselingh, Buffa and Oldenzeel. Collect pictures and select the ones to take to the next exhibition. And read the letters between the brothers. She discovers an infinite tenderness between them, she tells about it in his diary. “How they understood each other, how Vincent depended on Theo,” says Johanna. She often reads them crying.
Get a new sample, in Rotterdam and two very favorable articles appear in the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant. Johanna is excited. She visits the exhibition, but she objects to it. “The frames are ugly, they are not suitable,” she notes in her diary. But the dealer Oldenzeel promises a new exhibition for the fall… and “then it can be magnificent”, writes Johanna hopefully.
She continues to take care of her boarding house and her child and to work with the correspondence.. She also receives visits from her mother-in-law, Mrs. Van Gogh, because she wants to know everything about the life of her husband and her brother-in-law.
Johanna read the letters between the Van Gogh brothers crying: “How they understood each other,” she noted in her diary
Inaugurates a new exhibition in The Hague. Johanna is not happy: she has a large audience, but most go to see works by another painter: Jozef Israëls. “Vincent wanted to paint impossible things, like the Sun, Johanna reflects, searching for an explanation. She is also angry that Vincent’s best works have not been posted. She felt very alone in the middle of that crowd. I am planning to prepare an exhibition with all of Vincent’s work. Sometime this will have to be done, “says Johanna
there are those who laugh
Tireless, he continued with the exhibitions: in 1901 71 Van Goghs were shown in Paris, the great exhibition in Amsterdam arrived in 1905; in London in 1910 Van Gogh’s works were shown at an exhibition on Post-Impressionists in which “there were still those who laughed at his work,” said Vincent Willem Van Gogh, Johanna’s son. His works arrived in Cologne in 1912; to New York, in 1913; to Berlin, in 1914…
His ‘marketing’ strategy consisted of showing a lot, selling what was necessary and saving the great pieces for museums
But it wasn’t easy. In 1905, Johanna’s son told us that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam only agreed to hang two of Vincent’s drawings on its walls if they were given to him. The first museum to acquire works by Van Gogh for his collection was the Folkwang in Hagen in Germany, in 1936.
Johanna married the painter Johan Cohen Gosschalk in 1901, whom she widowed in 1912. She was a very active woman. She joined the socialist party, lived in Amsterdam, spent time in New York, translated the Van Gogh brothers’ letters into English, and in 1914 she managed to publish them in Holland.
He died in 1925. “He managed to see the second edition of the letters, a complete success in such a small country,” his son recalled. Her letters were for her the engine of the salvation of Van Gogh’s work.
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