Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier), 1888
Oil on canvas
Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena, California
Van Gogh’s ‘Patience Escalier’ at the Frick Collection On Fall 2012, the Frick Collection in New York presents Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)”, on loan from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.]]>
November 2, 2012, source: Frick Collection
The painting has not left its home institution, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, in nearly forty years, making this a rare and exciting viewing opportunity for East Coast audiences.
Writing from Arles on August 18, 1888, Vincent van Gogh announced to his brother and dealer, Theo, “You’llshortly make the acquaintance of Mr. Patience Escalier—a sort of man with a hoe, an old Camargue oxherd, who’snow a gardener at a farmstead in the Crau.” He was referring to the painting known as “Portrait of a Peasant(Patience Escalier)”. A drawing in reed pen that he had made after the painting and sent to Theo would not haveprepared his brother for the shock of the life-size, bust-length figure painted in vivid blue, bright yellow, and green,with a network of reds, ochers, gold, and green in the face. Such audacity in portraiture would not be seen againuntil the early twentieth century in the work of Matisse.
The painting, together with Vincent’s many statementsabout his artistic process and the deep significance of portraiture for him at this time, is a profound testament to aturning point in a great artist’s work. Using high-keyed colors, he stepped boldly off the path of strict naturalisticrepresentation into a more subjective realm in which he attempted to express the spirit or essence of his sitterthrough color and its symbolic associations. At the same time, the sitter, whom he refers to in another letter as a“pure-bred” peasant, brings him back to his early work in Nuenen, Holland, in which he aspired to be a “peasantpainter” and to dignify and give recognition to the common man through portraiture.
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Van Gogh’s immersion into nature shown in Philadelphia (exhibition, 2012)
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