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Vincent Van Gogh,   Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890 at the National Gallery of Art, a recent gift from the Collection of Mr & Mrs Paul Mellon Vincent Van Gogh's Green Wheat Fields, Auvers came into Washington's National Gallery of Art on December 20, 2013.  It's a windswept scene that sucks us in with intensity and urgency.     Green Wheat Fields, Auvers is among the 70 or so paintings he did during the two months of 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise.  Experts believe he painted it in June, 1890, the month before he died. Fortunately the new painting entered the museum at the same time Washington's Phillips Collection is hosting an exhibition, Van Gogh Repetitions, until February 2, 2014. The exhibition of 14 paintings examines why the artist repeated compositions in the same format with different colors and very minor design changes. It features several portraits, The Bedroom at Arles and two magnificent Van Goghs owned by the Phillips Coll...

Much of our appreciation of Van Gogh can be traced to Helene Müller, whose acquisitions are the foundation of the Kröller-Müller Museum. This German-born heiress was wise in recognizing Van Gogh's genius and became the first major collector of his work. She and her Dutch husband, Anton Kröller, built a sensational collection and began showing parts of it to the public as early as 1913.  They lost their fortune in the economic downturn after World War I, but formed the Kröller-Müller Foundation to protect the art.  In 1935, they donated a house, land and a collection of 12,000 pieces to the Netherlands on the condition the country will build a place to display it. There were 90 paintings, 185 drawings by Van Gogh. S till Life with Four Sunflowers, 1887, has contrasts of blue and orange, yellow and red, a reason I find this painting in the Kröller-Müller Museum more interesting than Van Gogh's more famous yellow paintings of sunflowers in a vase. In a recent trip to the Netherla...

J ean-Francois Millet, The Gust of Wind, 1871-73, National Museum of Wa les It's disappointing that the Corcoran exhibition, Fro m Turner to Cezanne , had to be taken down early as a precaution over environmental concerns......I was counting on going Friday, April 9, three days after it abruptly closed. What am I missing? A spectacular collection from the National Gallery of Wales, little-known paintings of well-known artists that are seldom seen in the US..................... Torrents of Rain and Gusts of Wind..... Vincent Van Gogh, Rain, Auvers, 1890, from the National Museum of Wales Vincent Van Gogh's suns, stars and flowers from sunny Provence express the intensity he experienced while living there. But in May, 1890, he moved north of Paris to Auvers-sur-Oise and painted Rain, Auvers in July. Van Gogh used such a heavy impasto of paint that this painting conveys a heavy impact of rain. Van Gogh had an uncommon ability to combine actual texture of the paint itself w...