Talk:Houses at Auvers

Houses at Auvers
'''The following is paraphrasing from a link. See User talk:CorinneSD.'''

During the years of his short life, Vincent van Gogh struggled to find meaning and love. Even though he was often surrounded by artists, he was a lonely man and often felt misunderstood. On the one hand, his imagination served him well as a painter but on the other, added to his mental illness, it magnified his interpretation of what people thought of him. He influenced and encouraged other artists and was influenced by them. He painted from 1880 to 1890. He was a prolific artist: 864 paintings and almost 1,200 drawings and prints have survived. He first painted in his native country, the Netherlands, then moved to France. He was in Paris from 1886-1888, in Arles in the south of France from 1888-1889. He spent the year 1889-1890 in Saint-Rémy trying to recover from mental illness. From May, 20, 1890, until his death, July 29, 1890, he was in Auvers-sur-Oise, a little village that was home at various times to such artists Armand Guillaumin, Camille Pissarro, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Paul Cézanne. Throughout the months of May, June and July of 1890, van Gogh painted many paintings, including the fields and many of the peasants' huts in the area.

(Continued paraphrasing here. I struggled with this part. Feel free to revise.) ...He seemed to find the thatched huts especially fascinating. In a letter he wrote, "In my opinion, the most marvellous of all that I know in the sphere of architecture is huts with their roofs of moss-grown straw and a smoky hearth." His paintings were a personal representation of what he saw, and his emotions influenced, and are seen in, his composition (raised horizon, grouped houses, extensive fields, wavy trees), choice of palette (narrow, often luminous greens and yellows), and brushstrokes – "agitated and nervous brushstrokes which follow a waving and repetitive rhythm". - CorinneSD (talk) 04:07, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

' and ' Did you see this? I finished paraphrasing the big paragraphs Hafs placed on my talk page. It can be added right after the previous paraphrasing. CorinneSD (talk) 19:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

very good, move to article. Hafspajen (talk) 08:00, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * User:Hafspajen Move it to the article even though I'm not finished? CorinneSD (talk) 16:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

[to be continued...] - oh, well, yes. Sorry about that. Is there any more material you worked on to add to Auvers? Hafspajen (talk) 16:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


 * - here. . Hafspajen (talk) 18:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh...I just saw this. Will work on it in a few hours, O.K.? CorinneSD (talk) 18:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Van Gogh's dedication to articulating the inner spirituality of man and nature led to a fusion of style and content that resulted in dramatic, imaginative, rhythmic, and emotional canvases that convey far more than the mere appearance of the subject. Although the source of much upset during his life, Van Gogh's instability provided the frenzied source for the emotional renderings of his surroundings and imbued each image with a deeper psychological reflection and resonance. Van Gogh's unstable personal temperament became synonymous with the romantic image of the tortured artist. His self-destructive talent that was echoed in the lives of many artists in the twentieth century. Van Gogh used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic colors to express subjective emotions. These methods and practice came to define many subsequent modern movements from Fauvism to Abstract Expressionism.

Clear examples of Van Gogh's wide influence can be seen throughout art history. The Fauves and the German Expressionists worked immediately after Van Gogh and adopted his subjective and spiritually inspired use of color. The Abstract Expressionists of the mid-twentieth century made use of Van Gogh's technique of sweeping, expressive brushstrokes to indicate the artist's psychological and emotional state. Even the Neo-Expressionists owe a debt to Van Gogh's expressive palette and brushwork. In popular culture, his life has inspired music and numerous films, including Vincente Minelli's Lust for Life (1956), which explores Van Gogh and Gauguin's volatile relationship.

Paraphrase of this last passage
One of van Gogh's aims was to express "the inner spirituality of man and nature". His imaginative and dramatic paintings depicted more than simply the houses, trees and fields that were his subjects: with his impulsive brushstrokes and symbolic colors, they reflected his emotions and his inner psychological state. His methods and symbolic use of color expressing an inner emotional life influenced subsequent artists such as those in the Fauves and the German Expressionists, and the later Abstract Expressionists and Neo-Expressionists.

 Hafs, what do you think of this paraphrase of the paragraphs just above it? CorinneSD (talk) 03:27, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I think this exactly what was missing from the article. I mean tragic circumstances and all that, but he - in a way -won. He won, trough his art... He fought for his art. Yes, he was living in misery, poverty, - but in his art, he never compromised. He never gave up, he never started painting cute pink little bestselling works..... He fought, he payed the price - but he won. And this is the great thing about his art, and this is why his works are valued so extremely high nowadays. --Hafspajen (talk) 12:24, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You could have gone ahead and added it to the article. I'll do that now. CorinneSD (talk) 18:49, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Link format
Trying to put in this link to a subsection of an article. See Van Gogh, Artistic breakthrough and final years Don't know how to do that. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 13:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Like this Way? --kelapstick(bainuu) 13:29, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you had too many levels of section, you just need the last one 7&6. --kelapstick(bainuu) 13:31, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * kelapstick, Merci. Vous avez raison!  7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 13:35, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 13:41, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Auvers size 30 canvases
Should Houses at Auvers be linked and pictured there? 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 15:29, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * No. It's a size 20 canvas. c1cada (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Work not listed in List of works by Vincent van Gogh
Image:Vincent Willem van Gogh 052.jpg|Houses in Auvers(1890). Musée d'Orsay, Paris. See Auvers size 30 canvases where it appears. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 16:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Rue à Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890 <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 12:44, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Possible reference
I ran across this. I don't speak Dutch. Perhaps its relevant? <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 01:01, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I was in error. There is an English language box you can check.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 02:49, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Dead link
3, 2015 "Google Cultural Institute". google.com.[dead link] Since it wasn't my creation, I do now know what was there. Would somebody please fix it? Thanks. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 22:53, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Current Note 23 does not have a URL. Current Note 25 in the current iteration is a dead link.  M'aidez, s'il vous plaît.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 14:56, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed 23 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let874/letter.html Note 25 is still dead. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 17:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It is marked with dead link on it. Should be easy to find.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 17:24, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 17:52, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Influence section needs a citation
Because of the DYK rules and practices, we will absolutely need a citation for this paragraph. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 13:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Attribution. The reference and link I put in originated in Flowering Orchards. I put in a reference to Pickvance in the further reading section, which I found and reformatted at Death of Vincent van Gogh. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 14:43, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Provenance
Seems likely that the painting was purchased from an exhibition, Important Paintings by Great French Masters of the Nineteenth Century, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, 12 February-10 March 1934. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 15:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I have not seen that citation. I think I've put in all the on line sources one can find through Bing and Google.  If you have other sources, e.g., HighBeam, I would imagine they could help.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 15:33, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I haven't seen it either - I think the citation used, Provenance Report of Toledo, lists the owners sequentially, so it passed from Bonger to Durand-Ruel, rather than Durand-Ruel acting as an agent. The painting was hung at that exhibition (footnote on Prov Report) Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 15:58, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK, "peasant cottage" etc.
The sources (including the two cited) make no reference to this painting as a "peasant cottage". In fact it was a town house on the outskirts of the town (la verdure in letter 881 to Theo, 10 June 1890). De La Faille gives the site at 5 Rue de Gré and mentions a 1963 photograph of the site. This is a recent 2011 photo of the site. It's obviously far too substantial for a "peasant cottage". It probably belonged to an artisan or tradesman. At that time it might very well have been rented out, Auvers being a bustling tourist town and a noted artists' colony. To call it a peasant's cottage is simply nonsense. Nor am I aware that any of the sources aver that Vincent was overtly fascinated by peasants' cottages. That too needs a citation from the experts here. c1cada (talk) 09:43, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Added: Pickvance p.235 Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers mentions Cezanne's House of Père Lacroix, i.e. a house belonging to a priest, as being in the same group but seen from a different angle. When Vincent was working as a missionary in the Borinage some 10 years before, he might have lodged in a peasant's cottage. You can be pretty sure French priests didn't. I shall edit at this article after July. c1cada (talk) 11:34, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * One of the sources notes that it's curioius you can still see the shutters painted in the same colours Vincent showed them, and that's right in the 2011 photo linked above. Interesting. c1cada (talk) 11:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Finally the sources describe the thatched cottage next to the house as a farmhouse. A farmhouse is not the same thing as a peasant's cottage and French farmers were not peasants. The sources say that just four of Vincent's Auvers' paintings feature thatched cottages as their main motif. These were shown rounded and stylized in a manner that was neither French nor Dutch, a reflection of Vincent's 'return to the North' preoccupation of the time. I see none of this in the article. c1cada (talk) 11:55, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've added a gallery showing these four paintings and quoting Pickvance on souvenirs du nord. I consider this a minimum to set right the balance here. c1cada (talk) 05:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

For the time being I have added a failed verification template. Editors here might like to correct their copy along the lines suggested above. Frankly I'm not optimistic about a good outcome here. What goes on on editors' Talk pages is their business I suppose, but when it spills over into article space we ought to try to make good our excesses: Wikipedia really doesn't care about your Talk page galleries. c1cada (talk) 01:05, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You've engaged in a symantic semantic argument that obscures the essential truth of the article. Of course, you may be technically correct as to the difference between a "peasant cottage" and other housing.  But in doing so you eliminated useful links and analysis linked to VanGogh's oeuvre that aided our readers and provided important and relevant context.  What you did is Throw out the baby with the bathwater.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 12:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * A large fruitcake! (11237986944).jpg
 * You mean "semantic" I take it. Some cake for you. You can eat it too if you like. c1cada (talk) 14:01, 11 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I use their antivirus. But my fingers outtyped my thoughts.  As Inspector Louis Renault in Casablanca said, "I am shocked."
 * Thanks for the cake. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 14:28, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I have completed my edits for now. I hope editors will agree that I have added more than I have taken out and what I have taken out is fair and reasonable. To repeat it's nonsense to call this house (or the farmhouses abutting) a peasant's cottage. It belonged to a mason. Vincent did not interest himself in the "peasants" of Auvers (such as there might have been in this prosperous tourist resort) - quite the opposite: for the first time in his artistic career he moved comfortably in bourgeois society. No pictures of peasants toiling at looms or eating meager meals of potatoes here. I have left the lede and the section "Biographical background" intact. These are problematic. If the issues still exist when I return post-July I shall edit accordingly. As I note above I'm not optimistic about the outcome. It would be pleasant to be surprised. c1cada (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I have provided a new background which I think gives a fuller context. I'm anxious to complete my editing here in the next day or so as I shall be exceptionally busy over the next few weeks and really don't like to leave unfinished business. I shall expand at "Related work and influence" and finally rewrite the lede in accordance with WP:MOS. Since the various topic are expounded quite fully, it need only be very brief and most of those citations relocated in the main body of the article
 * While editing here, I noticed that the Van Gogh Museum now offers high resolution images of all its work (as far as I can work out). I don't know how much of this has been transferred to Commons. Might interest gallerists. c1cada (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

" ... huts with their roofs of moss-grown straw and a smoky hearth"
I have removed this quote from an uncited letter. In the first place it's clearly a reference to the turf-huts of Drenthe and so out of place in a section about Auvers. In the second place the letter is uncited and on that ground alone should be removed. Finally it appears to be a fiction originating from a Hermitage blog. I'm not aware of a passage in the letters like this and a search on the 40 references to "hut" in the letters doesn't reveal one. c1cada (talk) 13:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * If the letter can be identified I'm open to using it, but not in the way it was used to bolster original research. c1cada (talk) 14:06, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I have now found the source of this. It was "cottage" and not the article's "hut", making it hard to find (the original French - he wrote in French at this time - is chaumière, i.e. a small country house, thatched cottage, and not a peasant's hut). First, a note on the original source for the quotation. It's a piece in the 1948 Hermitage catalogue (detailing all their wartime plunder ) and it goes on a bit about "peasant cottages" because that was the Marxist way see.

It appears in a letter (809) to Emile Bernard of October 1889. Here's the whole thing in context:


 * Look here, what I very much regret not having seen at the Exhibition is a series of houses of all the nations; I think it was Garnier or Viollet-le-Duc who organized it. Well, could you, who will have seen it, give me an idea, and especially a croquis with the colour of the primitive Egyptian house? It must be very simple, a square block, I believe, on a terrace — but I’d like to know the colouring too. I was reading in an article that it was blue, red and yellow.


 * Did you pay attention to it? Please inform me without fail! And it mustn’t be confused with the Persian or the Moroccan; there must be some that are more or less it, but not it.


 * Anyway, for me the most wonderful thing that I know in terms of architecture is the cottage with a mossy thatched roof, with its blackened hearth. So I’m very fussy. I saw a croquis of ancient Mexican houses in an illustrated magazine; that, too, seemed primitive and really beautiful. Ah, if only one knew the things of those days, and if one could paint the people of those days who lived in them — it would be as beautiful as Millet. Anyway, what we do know that’s solid these days, then, is Millet; I’m not talking about colour — but as character, as something significant, as something in which one has solid faith.

Well, the point is that in the first place October 1889 is before his "reminisces of the North" period of March-April 1890. And in the second place he's not talking about his fascination with thatched cottages (something Freudian there all this perhaps?) but his interest in primitive Egyptian and Mexican houses. And of course good old Millet.

So I don't think this should be in the article. If it really was a valid indication of Vincent's preoccupations at this time, you can be sure the sources will have taken it up. But they don't. c1cada (talk) 00:37, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

"... during his lifetime van Gogh only sold a single painting"
I've taken the trouble to knock this old chestnut on the head (which appeared in the original lede) in Note A (present version) following Van der Veen & Knapp pp. 13-4. In the first place I believe two sales of paintings are in fact recorded (and there's the commission of drawings from his Uncle Cor to consider as well). But the point is that simply because no sales are recorded doesn't mean there were no sales. In particular the Paris period, when he would most likely have made sales, is relatively undocumented simply because the brothers (Vincent and art dealer Theo) didn't correspond in letters at the time. And Van Der Veen & Knapp make the very salient point that in a sense Vincent can be said to have sold all his paintings to Theo because that was the contract between them, Vincent receiving a stipend (comfortable incidentally by the standards of the day) in return. The whole Van Der Veen & Knapp introduction cordially recommended by me to gallerists wishing to break into Van Gogh article space.

Since I'm here, can I just briefly (and kindly, I don't mean to launch a personal attack) take up again an editor above who took me to task for obscuring the "essential truth of the article" and throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

So what then was the essential truth of the article? Presumably this in the lede:
 * He painted 77 paintings during the period he was in Auvers,[5] many of whose themes revisit his earlier interest in the lives of peasants and their cottages[A][10][not in citation given]

The "not in citation" template was provided by me later. Indeed of the two citations provided, the first was a note quoting Toledo Museum blurb:
 * "Working in a hamlet called Chaponval in the western part of Auvers, Van Gogh painted a cluster of dwellings nestled amid walled gardens and trees silhouetted against a gray-blue, cloudy sky. These homes still exist (though now altered) along the Rue de Gré."

(peasants? cottages?), while the second was a BBC blog (borderline RS) which in the first place is bollocks in its central thesis (that it was his Borinage experience that inspired Vincent to art) and in the second place entirely doesn't mention Auvers at all. By WP:VERIFY standards that's pretty unimpressive.

But there's another issue at work here, what one might call the underlying matter-of-fact issue: that of the 77 or so paintings attributed to the Auvers period in the 1970 catalogue being quoted, not one depicted a scene of peasant life. It beggars belief that an editor wishing to contribute in article space on the Auvers period did not know that, was not even curious enough to click through the list provided in their citation (the excellent David Brooks I correspond with occasionally - there's stuff from me on his site) to discover that.

Dear editor, there never was a baby in the bathtub.

Still I'm rather enjoying my romp through Auvers period real estate. I'm moved to do some more Vincent, gallerists welcome I'm sure: just please observe a couple more garage hints 1 Wikipedia really doesn't care you think Leonardo da Vinci was the greatest genius who ever lived 2  Wikipedia really doesn't care you think the Mona Lisa is the greatest painting of all time and we should get on just fine. c1cada (talk) 02:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

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