Philadelphia Museum of Art

26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130
Phone (215) 763-8100
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http://www.philamuseum.org
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Van Gogh
Van Gogh

Face to Face

October 22, 2000 - January 14, 2001.
About The Exhibit

Location: The Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries

What fascinates me much, much more than anything else in my métier is the portrait, the modern portrait . . . I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in 100 years time." - VINCENT VAN GOGH, 1890

Van Gogh: Face to Face, the first comprehensive exhibition of portraits by one of the best-known painters in the history of Western Art, makes the final stop in its U.S. tour at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from October 22, 2000 to January 14, 2001.

A Fascination with All Human Beings
Van Gogh: Face to Face features more than 70 paintings and drawings from an international array of public and private collections, many of which have never been on view in the United States. Organized chronologically, Van Gogh: Face to Face explores the artist's fascination with his fellow human beings, and the extraordinary development of his vision. Highlights of the exhibition include:
  • Five bold self-portraits, starting with the earliest paintings done shortly after his arrival in Paris in 1886.


  • Early character studies of anonymous peasants and aged pensioners with whom the artist clearly empathized, painted while van Gogh lived in The Hague in 1882 and 1883.


  • Powerful examinations of friends and colleagues, including the art-dealer Alex Reid and Clasina Hoornik (Sien), with whom van Gogh shared a troubled relationship.


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  • An extraordinary group of portraits of the Roulin family, who befriended van Gogh in the French town of Arles.



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  • Candid and moving portraits produced by van Gogh while at the sanitarium in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.


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  • Serene yet penetrating works painted during the frenetically productive time in Auvers, his final home.



    • The Roulin Family
    Among the Roulin family portraits are seven likenesses of the pater familias Joseph, the postman who showed great and sustained kindness to van Gogh during his sojourn in Arles in 1888. Roulin, together with his wife Augustine and their three children - sons Camille and Armand, and the baby Marcelle - were the artist's most frequent and loyal models during this period. These pivotal works represent van Gogh at his most innovative.

    His Life
    Born in 1853, van Gogh devoted himself to painting and drawing only during the last decade of his life. He decided to become an artist in 1880, and worked in his native Netherlands until 1886. Van Gogh then moved to Paris, where he met the Impressionist painters, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as the Post-Impressionist Paul Gaugin.

    By 1888, the hectic pace of Parisian life took its toll on van Gogh both mentally and physically, and prompted his relocation to Arles in the south of France. It was there than van Gogh suffered one of his most violent breakdowns, and he eventually committed himself to an asylum at St.-Rémy in 1889. Van Gogh continued to work in St.-Rémy and later in Auvers, a town just northwest of Paris. He suffered further psychological collapses, however, and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in July 1890, at the age of 37.

    Concurrent Exhibitions
    Concurrent with Van Gogh: Face to Face will be a special installation of Portrait Drawings from the Collection, and the reopening of the Museum's newly renovated and reinstalled Galleries of Modern and Contemporary Art, in which van Gogh's legacy is evident in the work of many 20th-century artists.

    About the Museum

    The Philadelphia Museum of Art--in partnership with the city, the region, and art museums around the globe - seeks to preserve, enhance, interpret, and extend the reach of its great collections in particular, and the visual arts in general, to an increasing and increasingly diverse audience as a source of delight, illumination, and lifelong learning.