When Will They Plant Sunflowers at Van Gogh Museum Again
The Van Gogh Museum announced yesterday that its version of the Sunflowers volition stay in Amsterdam—and never over again get out on loan. Van Gogh painted seven still lifes of Sunflowers in Arles, and the Amsterdam version (1889) is a copy of the original on a yellow background, which is at the National Gallery in London.
As revealed in my book The Sunflowers are Mine (to be published in paperback on ix Feb), the Amsterdam Sunflowers travelled to 79 exhibition venues from the cease of the Second Earth War upward until the establishment of the Van Gogh Museum in 1973. Since and so the museum has only lent information technology sparingly, on six occasions: to The Hague (1978), Toronto (1981), Essen (1990), Chicago (2001), Tokyo (2003) and London (2014). During the state of war the painting had been evacuated to a camouflaged bunker in the sand dunes on the Dutch declension at Castricum.
Paintings stored by the Stedelijk Museum in the Castricum bunker, around 1940 Courtesy of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
The Amsterdam Sunflowers has been extensively studied by conservators, and nearly recently it was brought to the museum's studio on 11 Jan, for the terminal phase of the piece of work. They concluded that although the movie's ground and paint are stable, information technology is "very sensitive to vibrations and changes in humidity and temperature". To avoid any risks, Axel Rüger, the museum's manager, says that "the Sunflowers will no longer travel".
The nearly interesting discovery made during the research is that they were able to trace the Sunflowers to a detail curl of sail. At least eight other paintings were fabricated from the same ringlet in January 1889, shortly subsequently Van Gogh was released from infirmary later mutilating his ear only before Christmas.
The Amsterdam Sunflowers was originally even brighter and more hit than it is today. Some of the original paint has changed. Red (geranium lake) has faded and yellow (chrome yellow) has darkened. These findings take led to a conclusion to reduce the lighting levels on the picture, from 150 lux (used upward until 2014) to 50 lux (today). New LED lighting has been installed.
The enquiry has besides confirmed that a 3cm wooden strip added at the meridian of the canvas, to extend the motion picture slightly, was inserted by Van Gogh—and is not a later addition. This was probably washed by the artist because the flowers would otherwise accept been too close to the edge of the picture, particularly when framed.
Sunflowers in the conservation studio with conservators Ella Hendriks and René Boitelle with museum director Axel Rüger, Jan 2019 Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
The Amsterdam Sunflowers has been varnished on a succession of occasions, merely the varnish is now dirty and yellowed. Some of this cannot be safely removed, because the layers of paint and varnish have mixed.
In the late 1990s a wax layer was added to help secure the paint and make the surface more matt. This wax has adult a whitish quality, and so it is now being removed. Several retouches from before restorations have discoloured, but they cannot be safely removed, so new retouches will be added on top of them.
The Sunflowers is due to be returned to the gallery walls on 22 February. The painting will later class the centrepiece of an exhibition on Van Gogh and the Sunflowers (21 June-1 September).
News that the Amsterdam Sunflowers will not be travelling comes just two weeks later the National Gallery announced that its version of the Sunflowers (the one which Van Gogh copied for the Amsterdam flick) is to be lent to two museums in Nippon in 2020.
The materials used by Van Gogh in the London motion picture are similar, just not exactly the same as those in the Amsterdam piece of work. A National Gallery spokesman says that their version of the Sunflowers is commonly shown at 150 lux, considerably college than the Van Gogh Museum'south new level. He adds that the London Sunflowers had been advisedly assessed by conservators before lending to Nihon was agreed: "We would never loan a work of art if we felt at that place was undue risk."
Technical note
Other works by Van Gogh from the same roll of canvass as the Amsterdam Sunflowers (with de la Faille catalogue numbers) are: another version of the Sunflowers (F455, Philadelphia Museum of Art), three versions of La Berceuse (F504, Kröller-Müller Museum; F506, Art Institute of Chicago; and F508, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Basket with Potatoes (F386, Kröller-Müller Museum), La Crau with Peach Copse (F514, Courtauld Gallery), Orchard in Blossom (F515, Van Gogh Museum), Notwithstanding life of Oranges and Lemons (F502, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) and possibly the Cocky-portrait with bandaged Ear (F527, Courtauld Gallery).
Martin Bailey is a leading Van Gogh specialist and investigative reporter for The Fine art Newspaper. Bailey has curated Van Gogh exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery and Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland; he is now co-curating Tate U.k.'s The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain (27 March-11 August). He has written a number of other bestselling books, including Starry Dark: Van Gogh at the Asylum, published past White King of beasts (available through Amazon in the Britain and US ), The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh'south Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, available in the UK and US ) and Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, available in the Britain and U.s. ).
• To contact Martin Bailey, please email: vangogh@theartnewspaper.com
Read more from Martin's Adventures with Van Gogh web log here.
Source: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/01/25/amsterdam-sunflowers-will-never-again-travel
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