Dallas Museum of Art Exhibition “Van Gogh’s Sheaves of Wheat?

Monday, 30 October 2006 00:13

DALLAS, TX - The Dallas Museum of Art presents Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat, an in-depth study of a theme that both delighted and obsessed this great artist and influenced countless contemporaries.  Organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and featuring more than 50 works, among them Vincent van Gogh’s masterwork Sheaves of Wheat (1890) from the Museum’s collection, this exhibition explores the artist’s fascination with the motif in his paintings, drawings, and personal letters. The exhibition also examines the iconographic significance of wheat and agricultural labor in the work of other late 19th-century masters, including Paul Gauguin, Jean-François Millet, and Camille Pissarro.  On view through January 7, 2007, Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat will bring together one of the largest collections of Van Gogh paintings and drawings ever displayed in the Southwest.

“At the center of this extraordinary exhibition is one of the most important paintings from our permanent collection, Van Gogh’s luminous Sheaves of Wheat, which was gifted to us by Wendy and Emery Reves,” said John R. Lane, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art.  “Organized by the Dallas Museum of Art with important loans from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and other major national and international institutions, this exhibition provides viewers with an opportunity to study the social and cultural significance of this rich motif within Van Gogh’s own works and those of other artists of the time.”

A highlight of the DMA’s Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, Sheaves of Wheat was among the final works made by Van Gogh, completed weeks before the artist’s death in July 1890.  The work depicts a field of freshly stacked sheaves of golden wheat.  Some 18 other works by Van Gogh—such as Wheat Field with a Reaper (1889), on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and Corn Harvest in Provence (1888) on loan from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem—help to elucidate the artist’s vision and the aesthetic evolution of this theme, which was so central to the artist’s paintings, drawings, and writings.  The exhibition will also feature passages from Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, Theo, his friends, and other artists in which he discussed the importance of wheat and agriculture to his work.

“Van Gogh’s Sheaves of Wheat illuminates a common motif that has universal significance as a symbol of biblical and mythical abundance,” said Dorothy Kosinski, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture and the Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art at the DMA.  “This exhibition examines Van Gogh’s personal obsession with the theme, which became a metaphor for the creative process and the cycle of life in the artist’s work, and contextualizes Van Gogh’s interpretations with those of other artists of the time.”

The exhibition includes the work of other 19th-century artists, featuring individuals who Van Gogh admired and emulated, as well as artists of his generation who shared his enthusiasm and fascination with the theme.  Works by Émile Bernard, Jules Breton, Charles-François Daubigny, Julien Dupré, Paul Gauguin, Léon Augustin L’Hermitte, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Félix Edouard Vallotton illustrate a range of different approaches and reveal the larger social and political issues of the time.  Van Gogh’s Sheaves of Wheat was organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and curated by Dr. Kosinski.

Exhibition Catalogue

Van Gogh’s Sheaves of Wheat will be accompanied by a fully illustrated, 119-page catalogue, with a forward by Dr. Lane, essays by Dr. Kosinski and St. Louis Community College Assistant Professor of Art History, Dr. Bradley Fratello, and individual biographies by McDermott Graduate Curatorial Intern Laura Bruck on the artists included in the exhibition.  Extensive reference to the artist’s personal correspondence offers the reader insight into Van Gogh’s thoughts about these images. .

About the Dallas Museum of Art

The 23,000 works of art in the Museum’s encyclopedic collections span 5,000 years of history and represent all media with renowned strengths in the arts of the ancient Americas, Africa, Indonesia, and South Asia; European and American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; and American and international contemporary art.

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.  Visit : www.dm-art.org/