PERE TANGUY
By VINCENT VAN GOGH
"PERE TANGUY" (25"/19" inches) oil on canvas, Painted by VINCENT VAN GOGH in 1887. Collected by Edward G. Robinson, Beverly Hills, California.
AMONG the people VAN GOGH knew in the art world of Paris, Père Tanguy was closest to his image of simple humanity. This warm, friendly man, devoted to the struggling or unrecognized artists who came to his shop, was a Breton of radical convictions.
He had taken part in the Commune of 1871,had been exiled and amnestied, and now sold artists supplies in a little store which was a centre for the Impressionists and the younger avant garde, there one could see Pissarro, Cézanne & Gauguin & their paintings.
VAN GAGH made at least three portraits of Tanguy. This one is remarkable for the combination of a naïvely realistic view the centred- perfectly frontal figure- which reminds us both of medieval art & the primitives of photography with a complex setting of works of art- mainly Japanese.
The idea of the portrait figure among objects of art was common then among artists with a high culture and curiosity; examples are Manet's portrait of Zola and Degas' of the painter Tissot.
With a self consciousness rare in his portraits- VAN GAGH paints both his friend ship & his love of an exotic art. The surroundings & the figure clash a outdoor colouring in the first -more earnest tones in the second- dark blues & browns of a scale closer to the humanity of the sitter.
Yet the whole is a joyous harmony of bright and deep colours. Bold touches of green and red in the face and hands unite the figure to the surroundings, a surprising vermilion line traced freely along the costume repeats the red lines of the background.
The diagonal arms,legs & lapels are symmetrical counterparts of unmarked diagonals implicit in the pairing of similar elements in the Japanese works. Tanguy's homely features & above all. The eyes, are powerfully done, with a loving search of the qualities of the friend.
The face is intensely alive, the man's spirit radiates from a hidden region between the eyes, determining the radiation of the other features & the brush strokes. An equal life & firmness are transmitted to the tightly joined gay hands.
The Japanese heads are painted in pale flat tones, faithful to the originals and in polar contrast to Tanguy's face a clear sign that VAN GOGH understood an essential difference between Far Eastern & European art. for which man had a deeper meaning.
VINCENT VAN GOGH PAINTINGS