‘Van Gogh along the Seine’ Study Day

A group of forty experts, including the authors of the exhibition catalogue, colleagues from museums, experts in the field and institutional and private lenders, travelled to Amsterdam for the event. The dedicated Study Day gave the group the opportunity to take a deep dive into the exhibition before it opened to the public, to discuss topics in more depth, and to exchange new ideas and questions that arose from the exhibition.

Introductions in the auditorium

The morning started in the museum’s auditorium with a word of welcome by Marije Vellekoop, Head of Collections and Research at the Van Gogh Museum, followed by an extensive Introduction to the exhibition by Bregje Gerritse, Researcher and curator of the exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum.

Van Gogh along the Seine was a groundbreaking exhibition that showed how the area along the Seine around Asnières, to the north-west of Paris, was crucial to the artistic development of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries: Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, Emile Bernard and Charles Angrand. In the nineteenth century, leisure activities around the Seine became increasingly important for Parisians. New train stations and bridges made the suburbs of Paris more accessible and therefore increasingly popular. At the same time, smoking factory chimneys increasingly dominated the horizon.

Between 1881 and 1890, the five ambitious artists travelled on foot to the banks of the Seine with their painting supplies on their backs. With their easel in the green, they captured the changes brought about by the emerging industry. They found new, modern motifs and developed their use of colour and painting techniques.

Gallery discussions

The programme continued in the galleries, with presentations and discussions led by our team of catalogue authors: from the Art Institute of Chicago, co-curator Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Eleanor Wood Prince, Curator of Painting and Sculpture of Europe, and Jena K. Carvana, Curatorial Associate in Painting and Sculpture of Europe; Richard Thomson, Research Professor in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh; Charlotte Hellman, Head of the Signac Archives in Paris; François Lespinasse, leading Angrand expert; and from the Van Gogh Museum, Researchers Joost van der Hoeven and Teio Meedendorp.

This is the first time that the works that Van Gogh and his four contemporaries made in the area around Asnières have been studied as an independent group, and the authors conducted extensive art-historical and topographical research. Historical maps and old photographs and postcards revealed where the artists worked and how their paths intersected in search of new motifs.

Lively discussions and exchanges blossomed amidst the 75 works by the five artists that were reunited for this exhibition. These works included seven out of the nine works from Van Gogh’s triptychs, such as Fishing in the spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières) (1887), and masterpieces such as Oil sketch for 'La Grande Jatte' (1883) by Georges Seurat and Quai de Clichy, Gray Weather (1887) by Paul Signac.

This exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, and was on view from 14 May to 4 September 2023 in Chicago and from 13 October 2023 to 14 January 2024 in Amsterdam. The Art Institute of Chicago also organized a Study Day which took place on 30 August 2023. Several lectures presented there are available online.