Van Gogh Museum

So how do you pronounce Vincent's name?

Van Go

Van Goff

Van Goo

The answer can be heard here and the Wiki article about Vincent is here.

There was a cold damp wind blowing as we took the tram down to the Museum District.

These trams are very clean and modern.

We had to walk through the Rijksmuseum on the way to the Van Gogh Museum.

Notice the absence of people except for the one person. By noon when we returned there were long queues of people lining up to get in. The lesson, get there early on a weekday.

We will be going to this museum later in our stay, possibly next week.

A new wing of the Van Gogh Museum. It doesn't seem to have anything in it yet. We eventually found the entrance to the museum and five minutes later, we had our tickets and were inside. 

The reward for an early arrival at the museum. An empty room of Van Gogh paintings. 

Photography is allowed except for a few paintings that have a symbol beside them to tell you not to photograph. Sometimes I have also taken a photo of the description.

Another empty room. There are four floors of paintings and Marianne had the bright idea of starting at the top and working our way down. It worked very well since his later paintings tend to be on the top floor.

Occasionally there would be a painting by a contemporary of Van Gogh. Here is a Gauguin.

One wall had the above six paintings and this seventh lined up net to each other. It was very effective.

The camera does a pretty good job of dealing with the light but it does not capture the colours in their full glory. Particularly this yellow is pretty dismal compared to the real thing. As the museum became more crowded, the 24x zoom lense really helped since you did not have to get up close to the painting to get a decent image.

Probably my overall favourite.

Supposedly his last painting. To me it was quite different and more advanced than anything else there.

The detail from his supposedly last painting is interesting.

Apparently he had trouble with perspective and would sometimes draw lines on his paintings to help get the perspective correct. Here you can see the faint vertical pencil lines in the Montmarte windmills painting.

Apparently he used a device like this.

The theme of the exhibition was more nuts and bolts oriented showing how he did things and why some paintings look as they do now since some of the pigments have faded.

Here he painted a self portrait on the back of another of his paintings.

When I looked at this woman I thought she reminded me of a film star. Eventually I worked out who it was. Jeanne Moreau. This photo shows her younger but I had remembered her from the film 'The Train' when she was older. If you have never seen the film it is worth taking a look at, particularly the scene where they crash a steam engine.

The Museum itself was built in 1973 but appears to have been renovated recently.

Items that a painter of the time would typically use.

Looking out from the museum through gauze curtains.

He did three versions of the one scene including this last drawing.

These three paintings are supposed to be hung next to each other like this.

By noon the museum was getting quite crowded. A woman was entertaining small children with a dummy, presumably explaining the paintings to them.

The Japanese influence.

By now I had enough paintings to last me quite a few days. It's something to see such a huge collection of them but for somebody like me who does not really understand art, it's a bit overwhelming.

People lining up to enter.

So one final painting. It was a very intelligent display of his paintings, not just paintings plopped on a wall in chronological order. It cost 15 Euros to get in but I would say it was well worth it.

This was Marianne's favourite painting in the museum. She tried to get a postcard copy of it at the bookshop but of course it was not available.