A Painter's Influence
A Painter's Influence
Vincent van Gogh painted some of the most iconic and widely recognizable images in art history, making it fascinating to understand where he derived inspiration. The answer can be found in the later work of Adolphe Monticelli, where color, light, and composition are used to create striking still lifes.
Adolphe Monticelli, The Court of the Princess, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Born in Marseille, Adolphe Monticelli first came to Paris in 1847 as a student at the École des Beaux-Arts. He returned in 1856 for a longer sojourn, painting in Fontainebleau alongside his friend Diaz de la Peña and internalizing the chromatic lessons of his idol, Delacroix. Monticelli found some success during this period, painting decorative panels and Rococo-inspired fêtes champêtres.
When the Franco-Prussian War erupted in 1870, Monticelli returned permanently to Marseille, devoting himself to a life of painting and poverty in the provinces. Our work is an excellent example of this later style, which saw a change in subject matter from Romantic portraits and landscapes to still lifes of flowers. Tragically, Monticelli's relative isolation in the south and his distance from the major artistic developments then underway in Paris contributed to his marginalization within later histories of nineteenth-century art.
Adolphe Monticelli, La Jardiniere Fleurie, c. 1872
“I think back to what I was looking for before I arrived in Paris, and I don’t know if anyone before me has ever spoken of ’suggestive color.’ But Delacroix and Monticelli, even without having spoken of it, did.”
-Vincent van Gogh
Shortly after his move to Paris in 1886, Vincent van Gogh became familiar with Monticelli’s work, most likely in Joseph Delarebeyrette’s gallery. In this year he painted Vase with Zinnias and Other Flowers, a work that is demonstrative of his newfound admiration for Monticelli’s flower paintings.
Vincent van Gogh, Vase with Zinnias and Other Flowers, 1886, National Gallery of Canada
“Monticelli sometimes took a bouquet of flowers to bring together, on one painting, the whole range of his richest and most colorful hues. For that we have to go straight back to Delacroix to find a similar level of color orchestration.”
-Vincent van Gogh
Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo, who owned one of Monticelli’s still life paintings, are full of reverential comments about the painter, in particular his use of vibrant color and heavily impasto. This is echoed in a series of works van Gogh completed during his time in Paris.
“Under the blue sky, the orange, yellow, red patches of flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there’s something happier and more suggestive of love than in the north. It vibrates - like the bouquet by Monticelli that you have.”
-Vincent Van Gogh
After two years in Paris, van Gogh relocated to the South of France, where he developed his distinctive personal style in the last years of his life. Though the compositional qualities, brushwork, and overall aesthetic evolved into the van Gogh we think of today, echoes of Monticelli still exist in each work.
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889, Van Gogh Museum
ADOLPHE MONTICELLI
French, 1824-1886
La Jardinière fleurie, c. 1872
Oil on panel
21 7/8 x 18 1/8 in. (55.6 x 46 cm) Stamped lower right
Provenance:
Arnold Mettler, Bern, by 1986 Galerie Paul Vallotton, Lausanne Peter and Barbara Nathan, Zurich
Exhibitions:
Galerie Schmit, Paris MUN Galeria, Bilbao
Marseille, Centre de la Vieille Charité, Adolphe Monticelli, October 1986-January, 1987, p. 163, illustrated in color.
Literature:
Sauveur Stammégna, Catalogue des Oeuvres de Monticelli, Vence, 1981, vol. II, p. 170, no. 896, ill.