Van Gogh Face to Face: the Portraits

Just one month before his suicide in 1890 Vincent van Gogh wrote to his sister, "What impassions me most -- much, much more than all of the rest of my meitier -- is the portrait, the modern portrait". During his short, intense career he revolutionized portrait painting, decisively influencing its course in the twentieth century.Published to accompany a major touring exhibition, Van Gogh Face to Face brings together for the first time the great portraits from all periods of the painter's life, augmented by reproductions of many of his most important other paintings. The result is an unprecedented and wonderfully revealing study of van Gogh's development as an artist, making it possible to see his evolving approach to the genre as he pushed back the boundaries of portraiture, culminating in the masterworks of his final years.

Six original essays by leading art historians discuss the key aspects of van Gogh's portraits at different stages of his career. George Keyes begins by setting the paintings in the context of Dutch art, demonstrating the formative influence of masters such as Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Lauren Soth discusses the stark but carefully finished drawings made by van Gogh during his early years in The Hague. George Shackelford examines the pictures made during van Gogh's stay in Paris, his first works to show the influence of the Impressionists and of contemporaries such as Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

In Arles in the south of France, van Gogh entered a great period of feverish productivity, and his portraits -- of peasants, villagers, and himself -- are among his most powerful pictures. Roland Dorn examines the major works, in particular the revolutionary sequenceof portraits of the Roulin family in which van Gogh's experimentation with color is brought to fruition. After his breakdown, van Gogh moved first to an asylum in St. Remy and then to Auvers, a small village north of Paris. Judy Sund discusses the portraits van Gogh painted as he struggled to keep his sanity, including the famous pictures of Dr. Gachet and the final haunting self-portraits.

Joseph Rishel concludes by examining the impact of van Gogh's work on his contemporaries and his pervasive influence on later artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Munch, and Francis Bacon. Interspersed with the essays is a detailed, four-part chronology of the painter's life, beautifully illustrated with both his portraits and other important paintings.

Roland Dorn, an independent scholar, has published widely on van Gogh. George S. Keyes is Curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Joseph J. Rishel is Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. George T. M. Shackelford is Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lauren Soth is Professor of Art History at Carleton College. Judy Sund is Professor of Art History at Queens College.