Entry for May 13 2007/ VINCENT VAN GOGH, PORTRAITS

I always like to go back to my favorite artist, Vincent Van Gogh. Today we will look at two of his portraits. One of Van Gogh's more famous portraits, this gentleman Dr. Gachet had quite a famous history in the Impressionist art world, which you can read about below, thanks to the Art Museum.

Gachet, Dr Paul (1828-1909) Perhaps one of the most fascinating figures in the history ofImpressionism, he was a doctor who specialized in homeopathy, a psychiatrist, an engraver, a Darwinian, a Socialist and a consistently helpful and generous patron and friend to all those artists with whom he came into contact. As a young student in Paris he had frequented the Brasserie des Martyrs, and after concluding his medical studies at Montpellier he became a frequenter of the seminal Café Guerbois. He bought a house at Auvers-sur-Oise and, in his studio there, became an enthusiastic engraver, partly as a consequence of his earlier contacts withDaumier, Charles Méryon and Rodolphe Bresdin, artists whose styles were reflected in his own. He signed his works `Paul van Ryssel', deriving the surname from his native village near Lille.

It was in this studio that several of the Impressionists took up etching:Cézanne produced there an etching ofGuillaumin, as well as painting a number of flower pieces arranged in Delft vases for him by the doctor's wife. On the recommendation ofPissarro, Gachet tookVincent van Gogh into his house in 1890, and it was in Auvers that he committed suicide. Gachet's great collection of paintings by all the major figures of the movement was given to the state by his son and is now in the Musée d'Orsay.

This is one of my favorites just because it is so strange. In Van Gogh's earlier periods he painted in very dark browns. Many of his paintings of Dutch peasants are examples of this.

SKULL WITH CIGARETTE 1886