17

Wheel Ruts in the Road

The 1890s became known as the “Gay Nineties” in America and the “Naughty Nineties” in Great Britain, the result of decadent art created by Aubrey Beardsley and playwright Oscar Wilde.157 Meanwhile, in Paris, for the Post-Impressionist new artists, it would be another hard, decade-long slog to gain exposure and sell paintings.

Initially, Vincent’s death didn’t set the world on fire in terms of art sales or name recognition. He first became a known entity in his native Holland, due to the spot-on business instincts of Johanna van Gogh-Bonger who, with the help of her brother Dries, took her infant son Vincent and “almost the entirety of Vincent’s painted and graphic oeuvre” with her north of the border.158

To make such a big move, Andries needed assistance. He got a helping hand from an old friend of Vincent’s, the young man he befriended at the artist’s funeral—Emile Bernard. It is well documented that Emile Bernard, together with Andries Bonger, “classed, put in order, [and] prepared the packaging and shipping of Van Gogh’s works” for Jo van Gogh-Bonger’s journey back to Holland.159 He also took photographs of some of the artwork and would later become a collector of van Gogh. Finally, he also wrote about the artist and his stirring paintings in several publications over the years.

Bernard’s devotion to Vincent went further. By 1893, he began “publishing passages in Mercure de France from the letters he had received, accompanied by an extensive introduction.”160 After four such publications, he got permission from Jo to publish some passages from the letters between Vincent and Theo.161 Those letters, combined with Jo and Andries working the galleries and exhibits in and around Bussum, Netherlands, located southeast of Amsterdam, humanized van Gogh and provided exposure for his artwork.

Jo van Gogh-Bonger did not limit her promotional work to Netherlands only; she never forgot about the Paris art scene. By 1895, she was doing business with Ambroise Vollard, a prominent Parisian art dealer and one of van Gogh’s early champions. He bought several of Vincent’s paintings to “flip” them for a higher price.

In early 1896, Johanna organized two dedicated exhibitions in Holland: one in Groningen in February, where 101 works were shown, and a second in Rotterdam in March, where 52 pictures were shown. In September of that year, Vollard was finally permitted 56 paintings by Van Gogh at his new premises on Rue Lafitte in Paris.162

Jo also allowed Vollard to purchase a few paintings but “deliberately marked some of the best pictures as ‘not for sale.’”163 Not trusting the men she dealt with, she came up with ways to ensure that he wouldn’t get his hands on all of them. By doing so, Vollard as an art dealer and businessman would have to prove his salt in making sales at market prices to build a long-term relationship with her.

In the end, “Johanna and Vollard disagreed on the high prices she put on the works, and by February Vollard had sold only two drawings.” As more exhibitions followed, Jo made sure she didn’t work herself into a corner with the influential art dealer, working with other dealers and galleries so as not to become too dependent on any one dealer or exhibition.164

In 1896, Vollard put on two one-man shows: one during the summer, the second in the fall. “It was from the first of these that it is believed the Sutros bought their painting. The van Goghs acquired by the Unwins and the Sutros were among the first of the artist’s works to be sold by dealers in Paris.”165 Thomas Fisher Unwin acquired a van Gogh “flower still life sometime in the early 1890s from Père Tanguy in Paris.” It was a painting that was not on the A. B. List, since Tanguy himself was the owner. British dramatist Alfred Sutro and his wife Esther were also art collectors from time to time.

To put into perspective the enormous grassroots effort and long-term success of Jo van Gogh-Bonger in marketing and selling Vincent’s art, one can look at some other painters of the time: Gauguin sold his first painting in 1892, Cézanne in 1911, and Seurat in 1919. Britain and Berlin, and America for that matter, didn’t catch the wave of Impressionist work until the start of the twentieth century. By then, van Gogh was outselling his contemporaries.166

Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (also known as Schuff) was a third-class artist when compared with the talent, vision, and dexterity of either his friend Gauguin or van Gogh. But he knew great art when he saw it, and he wanted to get his hands on van Gogh’s work early. Schuff purchased two paintings from Jo: the still life Les Fleurs for 300 francs, and Undergrowth with Two Figures for 200 francs. In a March 1894 letter, he recommended that she should embrace those prices; by his next letter to her, she did indeed accept his offer, though “by this time Tanguy’s widow had asked for a larger commission, so Schuffenecker ended up paying a slightly higher total, namely 525 francs.”167

What few people knew about Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, who had met Paul Gauguin at a stock brokerage firm a decade before, was that he had inherited money from his parents and invested that bounty in a gold company, which took off. From that point forward, Schuff lived the life that Gauguin had always lusted for and dreamed about living … painting with no worries about money or concern about where the next paycheck or sale of a piece of art would come from.168

Lacking sufficient talent, Schuffenecker did not become a great artist. Instead, he became a shrewd investor, often complaining that he was broke when in fact he wasn’t, remaining cheap and miserly, never telling his community that he was well off so that he could underpay for paintings he desired to poach from his peers, who were far superior.

This deception led to a difference of perception of the two art buyers vying for van Goghs. While Schuffenecker was wise, acquiring van Goghs directly from Jo van Gogh-Bonger and through other art dealers, Vollard earned a reputation as an art “stealer”—so nicknamed—driven by his overt greed. Vollard would try to fool and manipulate Jo and, when that didn’t work, cajole her, trying to blind her to get her to agree to his awful terms. She learned to walk away, to not answer his letters. By the end of 1896, Jo had other ideas. As a businesswoman, with a son growing up fast, she had acquired thick skin.

Still, the Parisian art dealer Vollard pushed forward, convincing Jo to loan him the artwork that would mirror a retrospective she had done in the early 1890s in the Netherlands. For that one show, she agreed to provide “works on paper [including] forty-three drawings, thirteen watercolors, and a lithograph.”169

But the exhibit tanked; few showed up for the van Gogh retrospective. The press ignored it. “Vollard lamented to Johanna, people and art enthusiasts ‘won’t concern themselves with this exhibition.’”170

Shaming the art dealer for his failure to execute, Jo began to phase Vollard out from doing business. Still, “Vollard did not give up promoting Van Gogh’s works. However, he was forced to find other sources to stock his gallery because Johanna effectively refused to do business with the hard-bargaining dealer after relinquishing to him a half dozen canvases and ten drawings for a paltry sum in March 1897.”171

By the end of the decade, Jo van Gogh-Bonger was running out of art dealers whom she could trust in lending, negotiating, and selling van Gogh’s paintings. Vollard was proving unsuitable. She also broke off a relationship with another Paris art dealer, Lucien Moline, in 1895.

Learning that Emile Schuffenecker had bought several van Goghs and had helped put the paintings in shows in Oslo, Norway, and seeing the art market rise at the turn of the century, Jo decided it was time to make a big move with Vincent’s paintings, some of his iconic classic artwork.

That break would arrive at an exhibit in 1901.