Vincent Van Gogh, The Poet (Portrait of Eugène Boch) (1888). Photo: © Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d’Orsay) / Adrien Didierjean.
This is only the second time the museum has permitted audiences to wander its galleries after nightfall. The last occurrence was over a decade ago, when it trialed a similar event for another hit show, “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan.”
The works in “Poets and Lovers” were largely painted in the few years of Gogh life, during which he spent much time living in the southern French town of Arles. He made several paintings like The Sower, included in the show, depicting an agriculturaler scattering seeds in the cool light of, casting the landscape in semi-fantastical shades of green, orange, and purple.
One of the portraits is of a fellow painter whom Van Gogh befriended, Eugène Boch. The appearance of stars in the background gives the painting a dreamlike quality.
“Behind his head, instead of painting ordinary wall of shabby apartment, I will paint infinity,” Van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo. “Through this simple combination of the bright head against this rich, blue background, I will obtain a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky.”
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