‘celestial blues and yellows.. i can’t paint as pretty as this’

Johannes Vermeer had only been rediscovered a few years earlier during Van Gogh’s time, but Vincent and his brother Theo were early enthusiasts. Théophile Thoré-Bürger, the French critic who made the Delft master famous, published his catalog in 1866, when the two Van Gogh brothers were boys.

Vincent’s favorite Vermeer was View of Delft (1660-1661), which he saw in the Mauritshuis when he lived in The Hague. Hospitalized in June 1882, while being treated for gonorrhea, he wrote to Theo: “The view from the window of the room is splendid to me: the quays, the canal with potato barges, the backs of houses being demolished, with workmen, a bit of garden and in the next shot, further away, the quay with the row of trees and lampposts, a complicated courtyard with its gardens, and also all the roofs, all seen from as the crow flies.

He then compared the light effects he saw from the window of the crowded room with those of Vermeer’s atmospheric painting. Undergoing painful treatment, dreaming of View of Delft console.

Three years later he wrote again on View of Delfttelling Theo that “when viewed up close, The Hague’s cityscape [at the Mauritshuis] East amazingand made with completely different colors than one would assume a few steps away [from the painting]”.

In July 1888, while living in Arles, Vincent wrote to his artist friend Emile Bernard about Woman in blue reading a letter (1662-64) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: “Do you know a painter called Vermeer, who, for example, painted a very beautiful pregnant Dutch woman? This strange painter’s palette is blue, lemon yellow, pearl gray, black, white. Of course, in his few canvases there is, if you will, all the riches of a complete palette.

Well over a century after Van Gogh’s time, there is still debate over whether or not the woman was pregnant. THE catalog for the current exhibition at the Rijksmuseum comments: “Much thought has been given to the question of whether the loosely cut garment is a clear sign that the woman is pregnant. As the garment itself does not provide a clear answer, speculation will continue, which may be exactly what Vermeer intended.

Two months later, Vincent returns to View of Delft in a letter to Theo, comparing Vermeer’s cityscape of Arles and its surroundings under the light of Provence: “Nature here is extraordinarily beautiful. Everything and everywhere. The dome of the sky is a wondrous blue, the sun has a pale sulfur sheen, and it’s soft and lovely, like the combination of celestial blues and yellows in Vermeer’s paintings of Delft. I can’t paint as nicely as this, but it absorbs me so much that I let myself go without thinking of any rules.

Vermeer helped give Van Gogh the confidence to break the rules of conventional art. After discussing the Delft master, he immediately gave some examples of his recent work, including the four versions of Sunflowers which he had just finished a few weeks earlier. Of course, Van Gogh’s work is completely different from Vermeer’s, but both artists broke new ground.

What was not appreciated is that the Parisian gallery where Theo worked, Boussod & Valadon, may have helped sell two Vermeers: Mistress and maid (1664-1667) and Woman writing a letter, with her servant (1670-1672).

In July 1889, Boussod & Valadon was one of two companies involved in the auction of the famous collection of Etienne Secrétan, a wealthy owner of a copper foundry. The sale took place at the Charles Sedelmeyer gallery, but with the assistance of Boussod & Valadon, as indicated on the cover of the catalog.

Theo was heavily involved in the sale. His wife Jo wrote to her family about the scene outside the auctioneers: ‘The whole street full of vehicles – unbearably hot inside and naturally a sea of ​​people… I’ll be happy for Theo when it’s all over, because he’s extremely busy.” A few days later, she sends a letter to Vincent, saying that Theo “has been caused a lot of fatigue by this Secrétan sale”.

Theo, the manager of the Boussod & Valadon branch on Boulevard Montmartre, dealt largely with 19th-century art, so it is unclear whether he was directly involved with the two Vermeers. But he would certainly have seen the paintings up close.

The two Vermeers sold: Mistress and maid to Russian statesman Alexander Polovstov (now in the Frick Collection, New York) and Woman writing a letter, with her maid to the Paris-based Marinoni Collection (now in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).

In February 1890, after Vincent had moved to the asylum in the suburbs of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Théo recounted a visit to the Louvre he had just made with their sister Wil. Theo told his brother that The Lacemaker (1666-70) had been moved since they had seen him together two or three years earlier, when Vincent was living with him in Paris. It now hung at eye level, so the details of this jewel-like canvas could be better appreciated.

Both Van Gogh brothers seem to have been equally enthusiastic about Vermeer. The popularity of the Delft artist has exploded since their time, witness the sold-out retrospective at the Rijksmuseum. Two of the half-dozen most popular artists in the world are now Dutch, both with surnames starting with V.

Other Van Gogh short stories:

pensioner drinking coffee (November 1882), an extremely rare print by Van Gogh, is put up for sale. The lithograph is offered on May 10 by Burgersdijk & Niermans, based in Leiden, with an estimate of €80,000.

Only three impressions of this print are known, two of which are in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This third example was given by Van Gogh to his artist friend Anton van Rappard. Passed later by the Audretsch gallery in The Hague, it remained in the same family for almost a century.

The print depicts Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland, who lived in a hospice in The Hague where Van Gogh regularly visited to sketch its elderly residents. Zuyderland, then 72, was his favorite model.

Sotheby’s offered what has been cataloged as an alternate version of pensioner drinking coffee on April 20, 2016 in New York. The estimate was $180,000 to $200,000. The Sotheby’s print turned out not to be authentic and was only a later reproduction – and it was removed before the auction.