Van Goghs to Visit Washington By Jo Ann Lewis Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, January 13, 1998; Page A01

"Self-Portrait With Straw Hat," by Vincent van Gogh. (Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum)

Billed as the largest survey outside the Netherlands of van Gogh's career in more than a quarter century, the show could be one of the most popular in the gallery's history.

The paintings of the tortured Dutch artist, who painted for only 10 years and sold virtually nothing during his lifetime, are expected to draw more visitors than the 1995-96 show featuring 21 works of the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. The Vermeer show had 327,551 visitors, but was much smaller and was closed 20 out of 90 days by the federal budget shutdown.

Titled "Van Gogh's Van Goghs: Masterpieces From the Van Gogh Museum," the exhibition was organized in cooperation with the museum built in 1973 to house the Van Gogh collection. Today, its 207 paintings, 580 drawings, 7 sketchbooks and 750 letters constitute the world's largest van Gogh trove.

Most of the paintings coming here were last in the United States 34 years ago at the short-lived Washington Gallery of Modern Art on 21st Street NW and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. That show was one of Washington's first modern blockbuster exhibitions. It drew a rec ord 70,000 visitors during its six-week stay in 1964. Far larger crowds are expected this time.

Meanwhile, don't call the National Gallery for tickets yet. The museum will come up with a system of free passes; details will be announced later. For other big exhibits the gallery has set up a ticket desk that allowed museum-goers to obtain passes to view the shows at a specific time. But the system for the van Gogh exhibit may be different.

National Gallery Director Earl "Rusty" Powell III said renovations and construction of a new wing at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, starting next fall, have made this exhibition possible. The show will travel to only one other venue, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be on display from Jan. 17 to April 4, 1999.

The idea of bringing the van Goghs to Washington was first broached in 1996. On a trip to Amsterdam, Powell paid a courtesy call on Ronald De Leeuw, then director of the Van Gogh Museum, who told Powell of the renovation-construction plans.

"We told him we'd be interested in the possibility of mounting an exhibition here while his museum was closed. He said he'd think about it," Powell said in an interview.

A year later, Powell was in Rome for another meeting of museum directors. He ran into the museum's new director, John Leighton, and brought up the subject again. "Things got serious," Powell recalled. "They said they thought it could be done."

Powell wanted a second U.S. venue to share the costs. He scouted the meeting for a representative of the Los Angeles County Museum. As simple as that, the deal was done.

Van Gogh fans will recognize several iconic works due to return to Washington in this show, among them versions of "The Potato Eaters" (1885), "The Bedroom" (1888), "Self Portrait as an Artist" (1888) and "Wheat Field With Crows" (1890). And while probably less dense with masterpieces than the two great Metropolitan Museum exhibitions devoted to "Van Gogh in Arles" (1984) and "Van Gogh in Saint-Remy and Auvers" (1986), "Van Gogh's Van Goghs" will offer a broader look at the artist's development during the feverish decade that made up his short career.

A failed art dealer and preacher by age 27, van Gogh struggled hard to learn his new trade and it shows in some of the early works from Belgium, Holland and, finally, Paris. It was there that impressionism and Japanese prints helped free his color and compositions from the past, allowing him to hit his stride in Arles and, finally, in mental clinics in Saint-Remy and Auvers.

Some of the greatest pleasures of this collection may well come from encounters with less-familiar paintings of favorite subjects, such as cypresses, blossoming trees, self-portraits and wheat fields.

The van Gogh family collection has a fascinating history. Because van Gogh still owned almost all his paintings when he died in a small French village from a self-inflicted bullet wound, he left his long-suffering brother Theo – his sole support – more than 400 works. But Theo, an equally fragile, 34-year-old Paris art dealer, was so overcome by exhaustion and guilt after his brother's suicide that he died just six months later, leaving the collection to his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, and their infant son, Vincent.

She subsequently left Paris, returned to Holland and devoted much of her life to promoting van Gogh's work through exhibitions in Holland and France and sales to important European museums. In a labor of love, she also published van Gogh's remarkably passionate and revealing letters to Theo. Those letters have added immeasurably both to the myth and the understanding of van Gogh, not just as a tormented genius but as a highly rational and determined artist.

Many van Gogh masterpieces that now now hang on the walls of great European museums were purchased from van Gogh-Bonger in the early years. But by the early 1920s, with the artist's reputation secure, she had stopped selling work to preserve the core collection. After her death in 1925, the remaining 200 paintings were housed for a time in the Rijks mu seum, following an exhibition there. After World War II, Jo and Theo's son, Vincent, by then a successful engineer, became interested in the collection and began arranging exhibitions and giving lectures, as he did in Washington in 1964.

It was his warnings that the collection might be dispersed by his heirs that led the Dutch government to purchase the collection in 1962 for $8 million, and to build the Van Gogh Museum, a four-story building designed by the De Stijl architect Gerrit Rietveld; it opened in 1973.

The two Washington surveys, 34 years apart, bracket a period when public interest in van Gogh took on phenomenal proportions – not only in countless exhibitions around the world but also in the marketplace. In 1987 his "Sunflowers" sold to the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Co. of Japan for $39.9 million, obliterating all previous auction rec ords. The $82.5 million paid in 1990 for his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" remains the most expensive painting sold at auction.

Van Gogh's remarkable staying power is no mystery, says National Gallery curator Philip Conisbee.

"He is a great painter whose best works are engaging and moving, and set the direction for 20th-century expressionism. He also epitomizes the romantic idea of the genius neglected in his lifetime. He lived that myth, which appeals to people's imagination.

„"We've learned a lot about van Gogh since [the 1964 exhibition], especially about the old view of him as a mad genius," Conisbee continues. "He was a genius. But I don't think he was mad. . . . If you read his letters, he speaks in a very thoughtful way about his art, which was clearly not blind self-expression."

Van Gogh's accelerating cycles of mental disturbance will probably never be fully diagnosed, but they continue to be variously ascribed to epilepsy, manic depression and alcohol.

For all of these reasons – and the fact that most Americans have not yet seen many of the works coming to Washington – this National Gallery exhibition will probably attract wide attention. There is also one other reason: According to recent European press reports, van Gogh scholars have recently raised questions about the authenticity of several paintings attributed to the Dutchman, including the famous "Sunflowers." Though still unproved, the allegations have caused considerable distress at the Van Gogh Museum, which is building its new wing with a $19 million gift from Yasuda.

"Obviously, for us, this is not the ideal situation," the Van Gogh Museum's Leighton said by phone from Amsterdam yesterday. Underscoring the fact that none of the paintings in the upcoming show is in question, he said he believes the controversy over "Sunflowers" is a "red herring" that will soon be quashed. Meanwhile, he said, his museum and the National Gallery in London – both of which own other versions of "Sunflowers" – are "doing more research" on the matter. The Amsterdam museum's sunflower painting will not be coming to Washington.

Andersen Consulting is the exclusive sponsor of the National Gallery exhibit. The cost of underwriting the show was not disclosed, but is expected to be seven figures. James Murphy, the company's global managing director for marketing and communications, said this is the first major arts exhibition sponsored by the firm. Andersen had revenues of $5.6 billion in 1996.