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Ravine

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890)
1889

Medium/Technique Oil on canvas
Dimensions 73 x 91.7 cm (28 3/4 x 36 1/8 in.)
Credit Line Bequest of Keith McLeod
Accession Number52.1524
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
In the autumn of 1889, Van Gogh painted the ravine near the asylum in the southern French town of Saint‑Remy. He wrote about it to his dear friend Emile Bernard: “Such subjects certainly have a fine melancholy, but then it is fun to work in rather wild places, where one has to dig one’s easel in between the stones lest the wind should blow the whole caboodle over.” The following spring, Van Gogh sent this painting to Paris, where Paul Gauguin saw it and wrote to him: “In subjects from nature you are the only one who thinks. I talked about it with your brother, and there is one that I would like to trade with you for one of mine of your choice. The one I am talking about is a mountain landscape. Two travelers, very small, seem to be climbing there in search of the unknown…Here and there, red touches like lights, the whole in a violet tone. It is beautiful and grandiose.”

Recent collaborative research has revealed beneath the surface of “Ravine” an earlier painting of a hillside in bloom, likely painted in June of the same year. It appears Van Gogh found himself short of materials; sacrificing the earlier composition, he reused the canvas to create this painting.

For more information about this conservation discovery, copy and paste this link into your browser: https://www.mfa.org/collections/europe/missing-van-gogh-discovered

Chavannes, Meta and Louis van Tilborgh. "A missing Van Gogh unveiled." The Burlington Magazine 149, no. 1253 (2007): 546-50.

Catalogue Raisonné F662
ProvenanceJanuary, 1890, sent by the artist to his brother, Theo van Gogh (b. 1857 - d. 1891), Paris [see note 1]; 1890, possibly exchanged by Theo van Gogh with Paul Gauguin (b. 1848 - d. 1903), Paris [see note 2]. By 1901, Amedée Schuffenecker (b. 1854 - d. 1936), Paris [see note 3]; probably sold by Schuffenecker to Philippe Alexandre Berthier, Prince de Wagram (b. 1883 - d. 1918), Paris; between 1909 and 1912, sold by Wagram to the Galerie Barbazanges, Paris [see note 4]. By 1918, Jorgen Breder Stang (b. 1874 - d. 1950), Oslo [see note 5]; by 1928, consigned by Stang to Galerie Thannhauser, Lucerne and Berlin [see note 6]; 1929, sold by Thannhauser to Keith McLeod, Boston [see note 7]; 1952, bequest of Keith McLeod to the MFA. (Accession Date: October 16, 1952)

NOTES:
[1] The MFA painting has been identified with the canvas of the "Ravine...the study" sent by the artist to his brother in January of 1890 (letter 834, January 3, 1890). It was included in the sixth exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, March 20 - April 27, 1890. A closely-related composition, now at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, remained in the artist's possession at that time.

[2] After admiring the work at the Paris exhibition, Gauguin wrote to the artist, proposing an exchange for "the mountain landscape" and including a sketch of the Ravine (letter 859, March 20, 1890). It may be the "landscape in a mauve tonality" that Ambroise Vollard described as hanging over Gauguin's bed; see his Recollections of a Picture Dealer, trans. V. M. MacDonald (Mineola, NY, 1936; 2002), p. 174.

[3] Amédée Schuffenecker lent this painting to the exhibition “Vincent van Gogh,” Gallery Bernheim-Jeune (Paris, March 15-31, 1901). See Teio Meedendorp, "The Schuffenecker Brothers and the Prince of Wagram," in The paintings of Vincent van Gogh in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo, 1998), p. 418, n. 4.

[4] The Prince de Wagram lent the painting to“Quelques oeuvres de Vincent van Gogh” (Galerie Druet, Paris January 6 – 18, 1909), cat. no. 48. Between 1909 and 1912, he divested himself of his Van Gogh paintings. On the sale to Galerie Barbazanges, see Meedendorp 1998 (as above, n. 3), p. 419, n. 19.

[5] Stang lent the picture to the exhibition "Den Franske Utstilling" (I Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, January-February, 1918), cat. no. 102. The painting was exhibited, presumably by Stang, at the Leicester Galleries, November - December 1926, cat. no. 24. By January 1929, when the dealer Jacques Seligmann visited the Stang collection, the Van Gogh ("Paysage de Provence") was listed as being in his possession but "chez Tannhauser."

[6] A letter from Gilbert E. Fuller (signature illegible; author confirmed with the kind assistance of Monique Hageman) to Keith McLeod (August 26, 1928) in the MFA curatorial file discusses the Ravine, then with Thannhauser. He notes it had been brought from Lucerne.

[7] McLeod lent the painting to the "First Loan Exhibition" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 8 - December 7, 1929, cat. no. 84.