Dutch Painter Research Articles

Digital Dreams and Dubious Dollars: The Challenge of Immersive Van Gogh

The purpose of this study is to discuss the popularity, questions, and controversies surrounding art-themed digital immersive exhibitions based on the life and paintings of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). Since 2019, art-themed immersive exhibits have become extremely popular, with attendance that outstrips many museums showing the same artists, spawning controversy and challenging the fine art world. This study examines the rise of immersive art experiences, arguments for and against immersive spectacles as a way of experiencing artwork, and theoretical perspectives. Methodologies include research into historical, cultural, and commercial contexts including reviews, analyses, critiques, and participant observation. The study discusses components of the exhibition and presents specific arguments for and against them by producers, art critics, critical theorists, and spectators. Questions considered include: Are these exhibitions offering authentic art experiences, or are they exploiting great art for profit? Are they making art more accessible, or are they leading people away from seeing original paintings? Is the way people relate to art fundamentally changing in the age of social media, and if so, how will museums adjust? This study is novel in that it presents and evaluates diverging viewpoints on these controversies and proposes a more flexible approach that centers participant experiences over marketing claims and critical objections.

Vincent van Gogh’s Theological Chromatology: A Critical Reader of the Bible from His Option for the Poor Avant la Lettre

The aim of this article is to show how Vincent van Gogh developed a theological reflection that is mainly present in his paintings with religious motifs. This reflection is the fruit of his religious experience, which combines his spirituality with a social commitment to the miners in Borinage, Belgium, which can be seen as an option for the poor avant la lettre in the 19th century. This experience, far from strengthening his institutional relationship, rather provoked a critical attitude towards the theological discourse of the ecclesial context in which he lived and led the aspiring pastor to become a genius in painting. His theological interpretation as a critical reader of the Bible can be translated into what will be called here a theological chromatology, to be identified through the intersection of letters and paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Given the influence of the Dutch painter genius on contemporary culture, the process through which his reflection on the religious and theological issue emerges can be seen as a significant element in understanding the present in post-secular societies.

Posthumous Popularity; Fathoming Vincent van Gogh through Select Biofictions

This paper studies a few fictional representations of Vincent van Gogh in contemporary biofiction. The objective of this research is to analyse the life of a genius artist and his posthumous popularity by using the transmedia storytelling technique. Vincent Willem van Gogh, a Dutch painter who lived between 1853 and 1890, is widely regarded as one of the best exponents of post-impressionism. His eccentric life has been a perpetual obsession for creators to fictionally recreate him periodically after his disastrous end in the past hundred years. The paper captures three fictionalised biographical texts in the form of a novel, an animated movie and a documentary that transgress genre boundaries and renegotiate the relationship between historical facts and fiction. Throughout the 21st century, biographical materials, whether they are based on fact or fiction, have made significant contributions to this legend. The sources of the study pivot on three of van Gogh`s biofictions within film and literature; the novel Leaving van Gogh (2011) by Carol Wallace, the documentary Van Gogh: Painted with Words (2010) directed by Andrew Hutton and Loving Vincent (2017), a movie directed by Dorota Kobiela. The creators have taken artistic liberties by altering the stories with more engaging narratives as a way of rewriting the portrayal of the artist through fiction. Biofiction is a category of life writing that includes fictitious biographies and is typically a metafictional narrative in which a biographical subject is the protagonist or plays a significant role in the plot. Transmedia storytelling is an approach to integrating contemporary digital technology to communicate a cohesive narrative across several platforms and mediums. By utilising intermediary allusions and formal imitative techniques, van Gogh`s art, as well as the fundamental principles of artistic creation and his ubiquitous presence in contemporary times are explored.

К вопросу об атрибуции картины неизвестного голландского живописца XVII века из собрания Государственного исторического музея (Москва)

The article attempts to attribute a painting by an unknown 17th century Dutch painter from the collection of the State Historical Museum (Moscow). On the basis of the technical and technological characteristics of the painting revealed through initial examination, as well as deciphering of the artist’s signature discovered by the author of the article, the work is supposed to have been painted by Nicholas (Claes) Corneliszoon Moeyaert (1591-1655), one of the so-called “Pre-Rembrandtists”, the group of Amsterdam-based artists whose creative style influenced the young Rembrandt. The master was known for multi-figure compositions on historical and biblical subjects. The small number of Moeyaert’s works in Russian museum collections increases the cultural and historical significance of the painting from the collection of the State Historical Museum and emphasizes the need for its further research.

Detection of Cladosporium spinulosum on an engraving by Rembrandt and susceptibility profile to eco-friendly antifungal treatments.

Interdisciplinary studies on cultural heritage artworks provide efficient solutions to control fungal growth and the negative effects of biodeterioration. In this study, we aimed to identify the population of filamentous fungi colonizing an engraving by the Dutch painter Rembrandt, whose conservation status was compromised and showed visible stains of biodeterioration. Microbiological techniques, such as cultivation-dependent approaches and molecular biology, have been used to identify fungal populations. In addition, the anaerobic atmosphere technique and eco-friendly antifungal agents, such as essential oils (EOs) of Curcuma longa, Thymus vulgaris, and Melaleuca alternifolia, were tested against the metabolically active fungal population Cladoposporium spinulosum. Furthermore, in vitro assays revealed that the interaction between the fungal strains and EO was positive, inhibiting the growth of these fungi, and the EOs from T. vulgaris and M. alternifolia showed low minimum inhibitory concentration values. Exposure to anaerobic conditions for 35 days was effective in the total elimination of isolated fungal strains. In conclusion, this study demonstrated the effectiveness of a nondestructive technique for artwork on engraving colonized by fungal strains and using EO as an alternative to toxic antifungals used in conventional treatments in artworks. Thus, this interdisciplinary study involving applied microbiology and botanical and preventive conservation presents a tool to control microbial growth while maintaining artwork integrity.

Reality and Grotesqueness

"Paradise on Earth" is the representative work of Dutch painter Bosch in the Renaissance period. His works create a dreamlike world with wonderful imagination and grotesque and exaggerated images. Bosch perfectly integrated the painting language with the real world and enriched the painting expression. This article mainly analyzes some grotesque images in his works and attempts to explore Bosch's art.

Život, tvorba a klientela krajináře Remigia Adriana van Haanen

This study is dedicated to the Dutch painter Remigius van Haanen (1812-1894), who settled in Vienna in 1837, gaining acclaim for his romantic winter landscapes. It examines the painter's life, work, numerous study trips abroad, and his significance for 19th-century landscape art in central Europe. Using archival documents and contemporary press sources, the study explores the artist's affiliations with Viennese artistic circles and his extensive network of business contacts. Additionally, it provides insight into Van Haanen's art collecting activities, focusing especially on the Dutch masters.

Pieter Quast’s drawings in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum

The article analyses five drawings by the Dutch painter Pieter Quast (circa 1606– 1647) from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. The sheets shown are unpublished. They are executed in the artist’s characteristic technique: in black chalk on vellum; some sheets are signed and dated. They come from three different collections, four of the drawings came into the museum in the 18th century and one is a late acquisition and was purchased in 1972. The little-known master’s diverse body of work is represented in museum collections and private collections mainly by graphic material, including numerous drawings. The artist’s passion for drawing seems to have also been caused by his poor financial situation. Although Quast’s biography is known in fragments, published archival materials reveal the artist’s complex creative path. A study of his works from the national collection confirms their authorship and gives grounds for speculation about the reading of the subjects. The themes chosen by the master are inextricably linked with the pictorial tradition: the work of the 16th century masters, in particular Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Quast’s contemporaries Adriaen Braouwer, Adriaen van Ostade and others. The artist relied heavily on theatrical representations, both biblical and humorous folk sketches, as an important source of inspiration. This research paper analyses the master’s drawings both in terms of iconography and using the formal and stylistic method, using comparative analysis and putting the works in line with the artist’s other famous works.

Painted by nature, printed by artists

This article brings the 17th-century Dutch painter Otto Marseus van Schrieck and the contemporary German artist Maximilian Prüfer into dialogue. It investigates in particular Marseus’ and Prüfer’s use of butterfly scales as materials and motifs in their works of art. Both artists developed a similar technique of butterfly imprints (lepidochromy), which consists of transferring the scales of real butterflies onto another surface. The imprints thus combine medium with representation and the object being represented. The artists used a variety of animal substances to make their artworks, some still visible, some not, and gathered living animals to depict after life or to work with in other ways. Knowledge of and interest in natural history inform the work of both artists but their reflections on human relationships with other animals and with ‘nature’ differ.

Rembrandt’s Portraits and the Contemporary Spiritual Care Encounter

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), the Dutch painter, printmaker and portraitist, is frequently listed as being among the greatest of all visual artists. His portraits, in addition to their undeniable technical virtuosity, seem to be illuminated by an extraordinary light that evokes a spiritual dimension. This article explores what can be extrapolated from Rembrandt’s empathetic portraiture with a view to positively impacting the spiritual care encounter. It describes Rembrandt’s ongoing process of introspection and his concomitant ability to bear witness to his sitters, as evidenced by his compassionate portrayals of their vulnerable humanity. A contemporary insight into the empathetic reading of faces, as reflected in portraiture, is demonstrated through a comparative analysis of several portraits from the 2020 “Portraits for NHS Heroes” project during the COVID-19 epidemic.

The Legacy of Willem Beurs ‒ Bridging the Gap between Art and Material Perception

Abstract Dutch Golden Age painters could convincingly depict all sorts of materials. How did they do it and how do we perceive them as such, are questions that only recently have started to be addressed by art historians and vision scientists, respectively. This paper aims to discuss how a booklet of pictorial recipes written by the Dutch painter Willem Beurs in 1692 constitutes an index of key image features for material depiction and perception. Beurs’ recipes connect different materials according to their shared visual features, and offer the profiles, i.e., the optimal combinations, of these features to render a wide range of materials. By combining representation and perception, the knowledge of painters about the depiction of materials can help to understand the mechanisms of the visual system for material perception, and these in turn can explain the pictorial features that make the pictorial representation of materials so convincing.

Живописные реминисценции в романе Х. Дулиттл «Вели мне жить»

The article explores the picturesque reminiscences in the novel “Bid Me to Live” by H. Doolittle, associated with the work of Van Gogh. Reminiscences to the canvases of the Dutch painter create the image of Frederico, allow to create the inner world of the heroine.

Born Again: Dentist by Candlelight, Gerrit Dou, c. 1660–1665

This poem considers popular notions of life-after-death and the experience of passing on, comparing myths of the speaker’s childhood faith with the speaker’s personal vision. Partially ekphrastic, the poem takes its impetus from a painting by Dutch painter Gerrit Dou which depicts a 17th century dental procedure.

Trust in Art

Trust in Art Yahia Lababidi (bio) Painting was called “silent poetry.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Eager to emerge from isolation and encounter art and (safely) others, a writer in Florida takes in Van Gogh Alive at the Dalí Museum and finds a “strange beast” aspiring to be “a form of edutainment, geared for an impatient, digital age, accustomed to overstimulation.” Living in Florida for over a decade, I’ve been meaning to visit the Dalí Museum for a while. When I learned they were also featuring a van Gogh exhibit, fusing art and technology, that was all the incentive I needed to make the four-hour trek to St. Petersburg. The Dalí boasts that it is the first venue in North America, where most of the shows are held, to host Van Gogh Alive. Yet, beginning in 2021 and through 2022, spaces throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are taking turns receiving this wildly successful, hard-to-classify art experience—a total of some seventy cities worldwide, with a few like New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Charlotte, and Toronto even offering yoga classes within the exhibit! The only tickets I could find available for the Dalí–van Gogh doubleheader were for 8:30pm. Considering the museum closes at 10:00pm, that meant I had to do something I dislike: rush. So as not to give myself indigestion, I decided ahead of time to split my precious hour and a half evenly between the two greats. In honor of the incorrigible surrealist, the building housing his permanent collection was, suitably, visually arresting and fantastical. Click for larger view View full resolution VAN GOGH ALIVE AT THE DALÍ MUSEUM (ST. PETERSBURG, FL). ©2021 – SALVADOR DALÍ MUSEUM, INC., ST. PETERSBURG, FL. © 2020 GRANDE EXPERIENCES Designed by architect Yann Weymouth, from the parking lot you are greeted by the otherworldly structure: a rectangle [End Page 57] with eighteen-inch-thick hurricane-proof walls, from which emerges a giant free-form geodesic glass bubble known as “The Enigma.” Once inside, I savored the deservedly celebrated classics by Dalí that I’d only seen in reproduction, showcasing his playful, dynamic virtuosity: from the hallucinatory The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory to the technical brilliance of Living Still Life. I was captivated by my encounter, face-to-canvas, with the late works of Dalí—following his break with the surrealists—who had come to judge the art of his contemporaries as spiritually barren. In 1950 the ever-evolving, ever-curious artist coined the term “Nuclear Mysticism” to describe this phase, preoccupied with the mysteries of science and religion. The monumental canvases on display at the museum from this period are awe-inspiring, in scope and scale. Also rewarding, on another level, were the unexpected pieces from his early years, when the young artist was still discovering his voice and imitating his teachers. The permanent collection is a real eye-opener and a mind-bending audience with a master—made all the more memorable for having been my first museum outing since our global pandemic began! After being cooped up for so long, I admit I was starved for culture and (safe) human contact. Masked up and social-distancing, I was not prepared, however, for the van Gogh “exhibition.” The forty-five-minute experience (ideal timing) is also dreamlike, only more in the sense of a group psychedelic trip, where we the attendees “turn on, tune in, drop out,” letting the sound and light show wash over us. Unlike the Dalí experience, there are no gracefully mounted canvases for the museumgoers to slide up to, tilting their heads to sip and drink in the brushstrokes, all polite smiles and hushed appreciation. For those looking to be fine-tuned by the civilizing influence of Beauty—standing still and reflecting in the refracted light of another’s encounter with the Sublime—the van Gogh presented here is something of a shock to the fragile system. Alone together, huddled in the dark, we are ravished by hundreds of beloved images by the postimpressionist Dutch painter—ecstatic sunflowers, swirly starry nights, moody self-portraits—cast on walls, ceilings, floors by high-definition projectors and accompanied by a musical score...

The Van Gogh Enigma: Re-Mythifications of the Artist’s Genius in "Loving Vincent" and "At Eternity’s Gate"

Few painters have had as many films made about their lives as Vincent van Gogh. The interest in his story is due in part to the mystery surrounding his last days, in Arles, France. It is thus no coincidence that all the biopics about the Dutch painter focus on this stage of his life, including the recent works Loving Vincent (2017), an animated film by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, and Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate (2018). A comparative study of these two feature films, representing two different aesthetic and dramatic approaches, is conducted in pursuit of the two objectives of this paper: to identify the conventions of the subgenre of the artist biopic; and consequently, to analyze how both films reflect on the artist’s creative practice in order to determine whether the film camera is in fact capable of capturing the brushstroke and the mystique of the genius.

Jan Lucasz. van Hasselt: A Dutch Painter in Safavid Isfahan

In February 1617, Jan Lucasz. van Hasselt arrived in Persia accompanying Pietro Della Valle (1586–1652), a Roman noble. Sometime between 1618 and 1621 Van Hasselt entered the service of Shah ʿAbbas I (r. 1588–1629), for whom he worked as a painter until the death of the shah. Later, during the reign of Shah Safi I (r. 1629–42) and until 1654 he tried to establish himself as a commercial agent for Persia. The present paper examines the career of this Dutch painter in Persia and the Netherlands. Meanwhile the artworks that may be attributed to him will be discussed.

The self-assured silence: a subtle distance between acedia and melancholy in Pieter de Codde’s Portrait of a Young Man

ABSTRACT Circa 1630, the Dutch painter Pieter Jakobsz Codde, created a painting that shows little more than a young man sitting in a chair. Yet an in-depth examination of the person, the design of the space and the objects located in the room reveal that different aspects of disturbances and tensions have been integrated into the presentation and open a discourse on the imagery of melancholy and acedia. The paper shows by way of example that this is not an iconographic gimmick but rather a challenge to differentiate and then decide between political as well as social meanings. Should the painting’ viewer decide between temperament and vice in the meaning of the representations, he or she determines at the same stroke the defining characteristics of the subject. For while the melancholy enjoyed social acceptance, acedia remained a vice to be avoided. Decisive in this: by acknowledging one’s competence to distinguish between the two states, the observer was able to prove his or her own personal good character traits. The image and the handling of the image thereby constitute a situation in which decision-making authority could be practiced and positive character traits could be solidified.

New vision on the mental problems of Vincent van Gogh; results from a bottom-up approach using (semi-)structured diagnostic interviews

BackgroundOn July 29, 1890 at the age of 37 years, the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh died from the consequences of a suicide attempt with a gun 2 days earlier. Since then many medical and psychological theories were suggested about what had happened to Van Gogh.AimTo present an overview of the history of the mental problems of Van Gogh and the most likely diagnoses.Method(Semi-)structured diagnostic interviews were applied to three art historians who are very familiar with Van Gogh from his correspondence and other sources as well as a neuropsychiatric examination to evaluate whether the symptoms might be explained by a medical condition.ResultsSeveral previously suggested diagnoses could be excluded as being highly unlikely, while other diagnoses could be classified as more of less likely.ConclusionMost likely Van Gogh suffered from comorbid illnesses. Since young adulthood, he likely developed a (probably bipolar) mood disorder in combination with (traits of) a borderline personality disorder as underlying vulnerability. This likely worsened through an alcohol use disorder combined with malnutrition, which then led, in combination with rising psychosocial tensions, to a crisis in which he cut off his ear. Thereafter, he likely developed two deliriums probably related to alcohol withdrawal, followed by a worsening with severe depressive episodes (of which at least one with psychotic features) from which he did not fully recover, finally leading to his suicide. As additional comorbidity, focal (temporal lobe) epilepsy cannot be excluded.

Rembrandt’s Danaë as Perceived by Russian Postmodern Artists

This article considers works of contemporary artists inspired by Rembrandt’s Danaë (1636). The article’s purpose is to reveal the authors’ approaches to the perception of Rembrandt’s masterpiece and the representation of the well-known image in modern art. Paintings found at the exhibition In Memory of a Masterpiece (Chelyabinsk, 2006) are studied in the context of postmodern tendencies. Temporal, spatial, stylistic, cultural, and symbolic layers in works devoted to Danaë not only coexist and interact but are also presented with maximum irony, which is studied in the article through the prism of J. Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and that of “double copying” by R. Barthes. Artists get actively involved in the game, which is realised by decanonising and fragmenting the original and creating unexpected extravagant combinations. Their dialogue with Rembrandt involves borrowings from the original through direct citation and other forms, i. e. allusions, reminiscences, and the grotesque. The article’s authors classify works according to how the artists use different citation formulas containing explicit and implicit references to the original painting. In their interpretations, contemporary artists present the “memory of Danaë” in nostalgic and ironic ways, also using play, parody, and protest. Together with this, the play on 20th-century styles is easy to notice and ranges from naïve art, primitivism, and minimalism to expressionism, symbolism, cubism, abstractionism, surrealism, suprematism, etc. As a result, what emerges is a mega-text where canon and tradition interact with the unique form chosen by the author of a particular painting. Even though all the works are united by a single theme and scale, the artists demonstrate a high degree of freedom, a spirit of contest, and play in the context of the postmodernist perception of the heritage of Rembrandt. They start a dialogue with the great Dutch painter, each of them being a mature and recognised master, which adds to the project’s artistic importance. The variations on the theme of Danaë by Rembrandt dramatically differ from each other from the point of view of composition, technique, colour, and style. The artists make it possible for the well-known plot to be prolonged and actualised, making it a sign of contemporary culture and convincing the viewer of the vast possibilities of modern art.

Non-destructive portable X-ray fluorescence analysis of the Portrait of a Young Man with a Golden Chain (c. 1635) by Rembrandt and/or atelier

XRF is a suitable tool for studies of cultural heritage, since it provides valuable information about the chemical composition of an artefact by means of a non-invasive, multi-elemental and non-destructive in situ analysis. This work presents and discuss the technical examination of the Portrait of a Young Man with a Golden Chain (c. 1635), a wood panel historically attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn and/or atelier, from the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) collection. Rembrandt was a Dutch painter, considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Besides his great success as a historical painter and portraitist, Rembrandt ran large workshops and had a large number of pupils and assistants. In situ PXRF were performed for the elemental characterization of the pigments presents in the painting. The results make possible the characterization of the original materials presents in the painting. Some of the materials identified were Lead White, Chalk, Vermilion, Bone Black, Azurite, Smalt, and earth pigments, such as Red, Yellow and Brown Ochres.