Musée d'Orsay for Kids (125) Painting the Most Intense Blue / The Green-Eyed Friend, Van Gogh
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Boch, whom he met in a town near Arles, is a friend of Van Gogh.
Van Gogh desperately wanted to paint Boch, who had distinct features and green eyes, and who kept painting with big dreams.
Boch, with his sharp, razor-like face, wears a jacket with a small collar, and a tie like this over an unbleached shirt.
Van Gogh wrote in a letter:
"I want to thank Boch. I want to paint him with feeling. If so, I will paint him as he is as much as possible. But the finish will not be like this."
Van Gogh changed the golden hair of Boch he had initially thought of,
to orange, to chrome, to pale lemon. He kept changing it.
And then,
he painted a deep blue sky.
"The most intense blue I can paint! Boch's head will also become a star."
Van Gogh hung this painting in his room in the Yellow House.
Can you tell where it is?
And of course!
Van Gogh gave this painting to Boch as a gift.
Vincent Van Gogh
Eugène Boch the Poet 1888
Vincent van Gogh
Eugène Boch, Poet, 1888
Van Gogh met the Belgian painter Eugène Boch (1855-1941) in mid-June 1888, when Boch was staying for a few weeks in a village near Arles. In a letter to his brother Theo on July 8, Vincent wrote about Boch: "He has a razor-sharp physique and very striking green eyes. He works hard, painting big dreams like a nightingale singing; that is his essence. He will have blond hair. I would do that."
I want to put my gratitude and affection for him into the painting. So, I intend to paint him as faithfully as possible, just as he is. But the painting will not be finished as it is. To finish it, I will now use arbitrary colors. I exaggerated the blond of his hair, bringing it closer to orange tones, chrome, and pale lemon. With this simple combination, the blond head illuminated against this rich blue background can achieve a mysterious effect like a star in the deep blue."
Two weeks later, Boch posed for Van Gogh.
"Thanks to him, I finally have the first sketch of the painting 'The Poet' that I have dreamed of for a long time. He posed for me. In my portrait, his magnificent head with green eyes stands out against a background of a deep ultramarine starry sky. His attire is a small yellow jacket, an unbleached canvas collar, and a colorful tie."
Van Gogh considered this work to be nothing more than a 'sketch', but it is known that he framed this work, which he named 'The Poet', and for a time it was hung on the wall of his room in the Yellow House, as depicted in the first version of 'The Bedroom' (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
Thank you for reading.
The days spent in Arles, shortly before Gauguin arrived, were calm and beautiful. This was also the period when Van Gogh painted many stars in his night paintings.
Van Gogh wrote to Boch many times, proposed exchanging works, and sent many of his own sketches, just as he did in his letters to Theo.
This portrait of Boch was also hung in Boch's room when he passed away in his later years.
"Instead of painting the ordinary wall of this shabby apartment behind his head, I paint the infinite, a simple background of the most intense blue, the most intense blue I can create. And by combining this bright head against this rich blue, a mysterious painting is created, like a star floating in the azure sky."
Letter to Theo, 18 August 1888