Bill Brandt

titled by the photographer in ink and numbered in unidentified hands in pencil and with the photographer's credit stamp and a Harper's Bazaar stamp, titled, dated, and numbered in an unidentified hand in pencil, on the reverse, matted, framed, a Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, exhibition label on the reverse, 1950

The estate of the photographer

Noya Brandt, the photographer's widow, London, inherited from the above

Edwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, 1986

Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

Santa Fe, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, In Camera, November 1993 - February 1994

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 31 (this print)

'Sixty Years After--Still Van Gogh's Provence,' Harper's Bazaar, July 1951, p. 49 (possibly this print)

This print is on double-weight paper with a semi-glossy, finely textured, surface. When the photograph is examined closely in raking light, one can see the intricate handwork done by Brandt on the surface of the print to emphasize and de-emphasize various aspects of the image. He has retouched - possibly with a pencil or pen - the edges of the three window panes on the left side of the image. Similar retouching has been done on the chair. An examination of this handwork is instructive about Brandt's working style. Aside from some minor wear on the print's edges, and a small soft vertical crease in the lower left corner, the print is in excellent condition.
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Van Gogh's brief years in St.-Rémy-de-Provence, from 1888 to 1890, were filled with a frenzy of painting, a burst of creativity that produced over 180 canvases, among them the artist's celebrated Starry Night.  In the midst of this creative maelstrom, Van Gogh admitted himself to St.-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum built around a twelfth-century cloister, where he remained for nearly a year.  Théophile Peyron, the institution's director, set aside a second room for Van Gogh to use as a studio, and allowed him to paint outside in the courtyard and the surrounding fields.  His room there looked out onto a field of wildflowers and grasses, with low stone walls beyond, and here and there, small groves of trees. 

Van Gogh left St.-Rémy in 1890, and moved to Auvers-sur-Oise.  In August of that year, at age 37, he took his own life. 

In the summer of 1950, Bill Brandt made a pilgrimage to Provence to photograph what remained from the time Van Gogh spent there.  Several of the images, the present photograph among them, were published in the July 1951 issue of Harper's Bazaar under the title 'Sixty Years After--Still Van Gogh's Provence.'   The house where Van Gogh had lived in Arles was gone, but his room at St.-Paul-de-Mausole had survived.  It now no longer exists, destroyed during subsequent alterations to the building.