Collection Connections: Vincent van Gogh

August 15 – November 5, 2023

Stairwell Gallery

For our anniversary celebrations in 2023, the Museum has planned installations that highlight different aspects of its collection. In 1927, one of our founders, Lauren Chase Eastman, donated Jean-François Millet’s pastel First Steps. A photograph of this work, sent to Vincent van Gogh by his brother Theo, was the basis for an oil painting now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We will hang our Millet and a reproduction of the Van Gogh side-by-side in a spotlight exhibition. Interpretive material will explore Van Gogh’s process for producing his painting and describe the impact that Millet’s work had on the younger artist. Also on display will be other connections between the Museum’s collection and Van Gogh, including a painting by Anton Mauve, who was married to Van Gogh’s cousin and was a very significant early influence on his artwork, and a Japanese woodblock print that inspired his painting Bridge in the Rain (After Hiroshige).

Image Credits:

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875), First Steps, c. 1856-1858, pastel on paper, Gift of the Estate of Lauren Chase Eastman, 27.17

Anton Mauve (Dutch, 1838-1888), Cattle, c. 1880, oil on wood panel, Gift of Nina Eastman Rogers (from the Lauren Chase Eastman Collection), 34.26

Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797-1858), Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake (Ōhashi Atake no yūdachi), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), c. 1857, Gift of Wallace B. Rogers, 23.762