Matisse wanted to buy a Van Gogh portrait—instead, his brother bought a bicycle – The Art Newspaper

In 1899, Matisse, then a 29-year-old struggling artist, discovered Van Gogh’s work at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in Paris. He fell in love with L’Arlesienne and wanted to buy the portrait of the woman of Arles, which was being offered for just 150 francs (then equivalent to £6). But the impoverished painter still found it a challenge to raise the money.

More than four decades later Matisse recalled what had happened: “At Vollard’s there was a portrait by Van Gogh of a woman from Arles on a pink background. These days it’s famous.” This was probably the painting of L’Arlesienne (April 1890) which is now in São Paulo, although it might have been a similar version which can now be found at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.

Back in 1899 Matisse had written to his younger brother Auguste to ask for help: “If you want to use your savings to buy a corker of a painting, I’ve found one. It’s cheap and it’s very beautiful.” Auguste responded: “I can’t, I’ve just bought an Acatène.” An Acatène was one of the latest bicycles, costing around 500 francs.

Matisse somehow managed to raise the 150 francs for L’Arlesienne, returning to Vollard’s gallery six weeks later. By this time, however, the canny dealer had raised the price to 450 francs, which was completely beyond the artist’s means.

Vollard explained to the disappointed Matisse: “A picture doesn’t have a fixed value. Say I’ve a picture here and I normally ask 500 francs for it. Someone like Monsieur de Camondo [a very wealthy collector] arrives and takes a passing interest in it. My picture immediately goes up from 500 to 5,000 francs.”

However, while Matisse had missed out on a Van Gogh painting, he did at least already own a drawing. In the summer of 1897 he had stayed on the Breton island of Belle-Ile, where he met the Australian artist John Russell, who had become friends with Van Gogh in Paris a decade earlier. After moving to Arles Van Gogh had sent Russell finely executed pen-and-ink copies of a dozen of his paintings. Matisse was so entranced by seeing them that Russell very generously gave him one, Haystacks (July-August 1888).

Matisse later acquired two other Van Gogh drawings: The Harvest (July 1888) and Portrait of Patience Escalier (August 1888).

Inspiration

Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne were the great inspirers for the young Matisse. In 1898 Matisse had painted his own version of Sunflowers. Although the motif is undoubtedly Van Gogh’s, Matisse created his own very personal image, working in a much looser, more Expressionist style than the Dutchman.

Matisse’s admiration for Van Gogh only increased after he viewed the first retrospective of the artist’s work at the Bernheim Jeune gallery in Paris in 1901.

At the exhibition he met André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, fellow artists who were equally entranced by Van Gogh’s expressive use of colour. Matisse and his two associates were soon dubbed Les Fauves (The Wild Beasts), because of their powerful brushwork and shocking colours. 

Matisse’s most important Fauve portrait was of his wife Amélie. Dating from 1905, it is known as Portrait of Madame Matisse: The Green Line. In colouration it has echoes of Van Gogh’s Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe (January 1889), which Matisse knew well. 

In the 1941 interview in which Matisse recalled the bicycle anecdote he also revealed that, on the wall of his bedroom, he had two reproductions of paintings: Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and a work by his fellow Fauve, Georges Rouault. The Van Gogh was probably the one illustrated above, which had been acquired by Vollard in 1896, although it was possibly the other self-portrait with bandaged ear which is now at London’s Courtauld Gallery. A decade later, the 71-year-old Matisse still had the Van Gogh reproduction near his bed. 

In 1953, a year before Matisse’s death, the elderly and mainly bedridden artist was still innovating, producing his famed “cut-outs”—brightly-coloured irregular shapes arranged on a white background. That year he told an interviewer: “I’ve kept my eye on Cezanne and Van Gogh; each of them sought desperately to depict his own vision.”

Other Van Gogh news:

Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo (until 29 June) opens today at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. The show’s title comes from Van Gogh, who used the expression “astonishing things” in a letter to his brother, Theo, to shower praise on the 19th-century French writer and his sketches. Vincent was a great admirer of the novelist. However, although the Dutchman’s words have provided the show’s title, he does not feature in the actual exhibition.

Martin Bailey is a leading Van Gogh specialist and special correspondent for The Art Newspaper. Bailey has curated Van Gogh exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery, Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Bailey has written a number of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013 (UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016 (UK and US), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (UK and US) are also now available in a more compact paperback format. Living with Vincent van Gogh: the Homes and Landscapes that shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US) provides an overview of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Friend Van Gogh/Emile Bernard provides the first English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UK and US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please email vangogh@theartnewspaper.com. Please note that he does not undertake authentications.

Read more from Martin’s Adventures with Van Gogh blog here.