Van Gogh Museum

So on a rainy Wednesday afternoon we finally made good on a pledge made in Arles, in 2010, and again in 2011 and again in 2012, that we would visit Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum. We had already seen it in 1979, or 1989, but, hey, things change, and in particular, our appreciation of such things certainly has changed. It is a one-person museum, of course, although there are many works by other famous artists who influenced Van Gogh. But as a one-person museum, it permits insight into the artist and to the forces to which he responded, into his development as an artist, that are not available in the usual stray collection of his works. I am not a Van Gogh fan, personally, but I thought this museum did a wonderful job in displaying such things.

Didn't we see this guy in Paris? Musee D'Orsay?

The theme of the exhibition currently is "Van Gogh at work," and
these really are his palette and paint tubes from Paris

I won't try to do this in order nor weave a
Van Gogh narrative; here's a famous painting
of a chair, later 1880s, I'd say

His first big gig was with the Amsterdam Cancer Society
(nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)

Vicki in a Van Gogh chair in the museum bookstore

Extremely famous bedroom scene

Self-portrait with straw hat

He did some very few "religious" pieces: this is Jesus' raising Lazarus; Jesus
apparently is the one with the big boobs; Van Gogh went back to gardens and
wheat fields after this

Thus; the garden at the mental hospital where he lived for a while

Wheat field with storm approaching; prophetic?

Interlude: rainy day shot of the Rijksmuseum from the Van Gogh Museum

Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Van Gogh; too loose 
for me

Gaugin's portrait of Van Gogh

At last, in 1890, he walked out into a wheat field and shot himself, still a relatively
young man, and seeming finally to have found his unique vision...