It turned out that one of the self-portraits of Van Gogh depicted his brother Theo

Was Vincent van Gogh an impulsive brush genius? How did the paints survive the destructive effect of time? Did Van Gogh paint a portrait of his brother, Theo?

Theodore Van Gogh

The search for answers to these questions should begin with the widespread belief that Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) did not create a single portrait of Theo, his brother, his confidant and faithful ally. However, it is known that the brothers were very much alike. Now the principal researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, Louis van Tilborgh, is convinced that one of Vincent van Gogh’s many self-portraits is actually a portrait of his brother Theo. This conclusion is built on many distinct differences between the appearance of Theo and Vincent. Theo’s portrait, painted in 1887, shows a man with shaved cheeks. Theo’s beard is not red, like Vincent’s, but in color is closer to ocher. To top it off, the man’s ear in the portrait has a regular round shell, like Theo’s, and not like Vincent’s.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Portrait of Theo van Gogh, 1887.
The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Van Gogh Museum’s summer exhibition, Antwerp and Paris: New Perspectives, which runs through September 18 of this year, raises many intriguing questions.

As soon as you ask one question or another, there are answers that may surprise you. Famous works of art can appear to the viewer in a completely new light, which helps to keep the view of art fresh and undefended. And this is one of the reasons the Van Gogh Museum regularly examines its collection. The exposition presents the results of exhausting works on almost a hundred paintings by Van Gogh of the Antwerp and Paris periods. Little is known about this time, since at that time Van Gogh stopped writing letters to his brother Theo. Later, in Paris, the brothers lived together for two years. The gap in correspondence, however, made the study even more interesting.

54 paintings exhibited in the museum and dating from 1885-1888 year, fully reveal the powerful artistic talent of Van Gogh. In this short period of time, the artist turned from a realist with a limited gloomy palette into a modernist who expressed himself through sharp sweeping strokes and bright fresh colors.

But was Van Gogh an impulsive genius? It is known that he sat down to work spontaneously, without plans and prejudices. In the Antwerp and Paris period, he used a new range of bright colors in tubes. Unfortunately, the artist did not take into account that some paints will be less durable than others and will fade and deteriorate over time. Now we can restore the process of changing paint and understand the processes that may be happening to it today.

The museum’s research team has also made new discoveries regarding the dating of Van Gogh’s works. For example, the assumption that the image of a worker’s worn shoe dates from an early period in Neuen turned out to be wrong. It was discovered that the paint for the painting was done much later and applied on top of an old work depicting the look of Paris. In addition, it was found that the park, which Van Gogh painted in the painting “Garden of the Lovers,” was not laid out in the village of Asnir, but in the heart of the city - in Montmartre, in Paris. And the bird flying next to the lark in the "Field of Wheat" turned out to be a partridge…

Research was conducted by Louis Vann Tilborg and Ella Hendriks (Ella Hendriks). Margriet van Eikema Hommes and Monique Hageman contributed to this. Results published in collection catalog "Vincent van Gogh, Paintings 2. Antwerp & Paris, 1885-1888" more than six hundred pages long.

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