“La Mousmé” by Vincent van Gogh

La Mousmé by Vincent van Gogh La Mousmé by Vincent van Gogh is a portrait of a young Provençale girl. Her face is carefully modeled with vigorous line...
Vincent van Gogh
La Mousmé
Vincent van Gogh

La Mousmé by Vincent van Gogh

“La Mousmé” by Vincent van Gogh is a portrait of a young Provençale girl. Her face is carefully modeled with vigorous linear patterns of bold complementary colors that express Van Gogh’s sympathetic response to his sitter.

In several descriptions of the painting, Van Gogh mentioned the oleander buds in her hand. The flowers’ significance may be related to Van Gogh’s views on birth and renewal’s natural cycles.

Van Gogh wrote that portrait studies were:

“the only thing in painting that excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else.”

The painting was inspired by Pierre Loti’s novel Madame Chrysanthème in which a naval officer was married to a Japanese woman when he was stationed in Nagasaki, Japan.

The story from the novel and Van Gogh’s passion for  Japanese artwork influenced the “La Mousmé,” depicting a western-dressed Japanese girl. He wrote in a letter to his brother:

“It took me a whole week…but I had to reserve my mental energy to do the mousmé well. A mousmé is a Japanese girl—Provençal in this case—twelve to fourteen years old.”

Van Gogh’s use of color was symbolic, but the contrasting patterns and colors brought energy and intensity to his work. The flowering oleander, like the girl, is in the blossoming stage of life.

Complementary shades of blue and orange, a stylistic deviation from colors of Impressionist paintings, stand out against the pale green background. 

The girl’s dress is a blend of modern and traditional. The bright colors of the skirt and jacket are of the southern region of Arles. His greatest focus is on the girl’s face, giving her a Japanese influence.

It was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1888, at the age of 35, while living in Arles in southern France, which van Gogh dubbed “the Japan of the south.”

He hoped that his time in Arles would evoke in his work the simple yet dramatic expression of Japanese art.

In a letter to his brother, Theo, he wrote,

“Painting as it is now, promises to become more subtle – more like music and less like sculpture – and above all, it promises color.” 

In about 444 days, van Gogh made about 100 drawings and produced more than 200 paintings. He also wrote more than 200 letters. While he painted quickly, he thought carefully before he put his brush to canvas.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure.

He created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life.

They were characterized by bold colors and dramatic, impulsive, and expressive brushwork that contributed to modern art’s foundations.

La Mousmé

  • Title:                  La Mousmé
  • Also:                  La Mousmé, Sitting in a Cane Chair, Half-Figure (with a branch of oleander)
  • Artist:                Vincent van Gogh
  • Year:                  1888
  • Medium:           Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions      Height: 74 cm (29.1 in); Width: 60 cm (23.6 in)
  • Museum:          National Gallery of Art, D.C.

Vincent van Gogh

  • Name:                  Vincent Willem van Gogh
  • Born:                    1853 – Zundert, Netherlands
  • Died:                    1890 (aged 37) – Auvers-Sur-Oise, France
  • Resting place:      Cimetière d’Auvers-Sur-Oise, Auvers-Sur-Oise, France
  • Nationality:          Dutch
  • Movement:          Post-Impressionism

“La Mousmé” by Vincent van Gogh

A Virtual Tour of Vincent van Gogh

  • Starry Night
  • Starry Night Over the Rhône
  • Sunflowers
  • Irises (Getty Museum)
  • Self Portrait, dedicated to Paul Gauguin
  • Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin
  • White House at Night
  • The Night Café
  • Self-Portrait as a Painter
  • Self Portrait with Felt Hat
  • Green Wheat Field with Cypress
  • The Raising of Lazarus
  • Self-Portrait’ Mutilated Ear
  • Café Terrace at Night
  • Tarascon Stagecoach
  • Wheatfield with Crows
  • Bedroom in Arles
  • Portrait of the Artist’s Mother
  • Vase with Red Poppies
  • Memory of the Garden at Etten
  • Great Peacock Moth
  • Farmhouse in Provence
  • Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin
  • Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries
  • Seascape at Saintes-Maries
  • Girl in White
  • Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat
  • Van Gogh’s Chair
  • Gauguin’s Chair
  • Road with Cypress and Star
  • Almond Blossoms
  • The Church at Auvers
  • The Yellow House
  • Portrait of Père Tanguy
  • Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey
  • Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background
  • The Red Vineyard
  • View of Vessenots Near Auvers
  • La Mousmé

“La Mousmé” by Vincent van Gogh

A Virtual Tour of the National Gallery of Art

  • “Ginevra de’ Benci” by Leonardo da Vinci
  • “A Young Girl Reading” by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
  • “Small Cowper Madonna” by Raphael
  • “The Alba Madonna” by Raphael
  • “Nude on a Divan” by Amedeo Modigliani
  • “Nude on a Blue Cushion” by Amedeo Modigliani
  • “Saint Jerome” by El Greco
  • “The Houses of Parliament, Sunset” by Claude Monet (National Gallery of Art, DC)
  • “Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)” by Winslow Homer
  • “Madame Moitessier” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
  • “Adrienne (Woman with Bangs)” by Amedeo Modigliani
  • “Watson and the Shark” by John Singleton Copley
  • “The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries” by Jacques-Louis David
  • “The Boating Party” by Mary Cassatt
  • “Interior of the Pantheon, Rome” by Giovanni Paolo Panini
  • “Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilpéric” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
  • “Quadrille at the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
  • “A Dutch Courtyard” by Pieter de Hooch
  • “The Mother and Sister of the Artist” by Berthe Morisot
  • “New York” by George Bellows
  • “Self-Portrait” by John Singleton Copley
  • “Self-Portrait” by Benjamin West
  • “Symphony in White, No. 1″ by James Abbott McNeill Whistler
  • A Prince of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder
  • A Princess of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder
  • “Skiffs on the Yerres” by Gustave Caillebotte
  • “The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna” by Raphael
  • “The Equatorial Jungle” by Henri Rousseau
  • Masterpieces of the National Gallery of Art
  • “Venus and Adonis” by Titian
  • “Waterloo Bridge” by Claude Monet
  • “Christ at the Sea of Galilee” by Circle of Tintoretto
  • “Both Members of This Club” by George Bellows
  • “Club Night” by George Bellows
  • “Farmhouse in Provence” by Vincent van Gogh
  • “Girl in White” by Vincent van Gogh
  • “Street in Venice” by John Singer Sargent
  • “Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son” by Claude Monet
  • “A Lady Writing a Letter” by Johannes Vermeer
  • “Tale of Creation” – “Genesis II” by Franz Marc
  • “The Skater “by Gilbert Stuart
  • “The Washington Family” by Edward Savage
  • “The House Maid” by William McGregor Paxton
  • “Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White” by John Singer Sargent
  • “La Mousmé” by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh – Japonaiserie: the influence of Japanese art.

~~~

“The best way to know God is to love many things.”
– Vincent van Gogh

~~~

Photo Credit: 1) Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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3 September 2020, 06:43 | Views: 4326

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