The exhibition Van Gogh and the Olive Groves offered a unique, one-off opportunity to study Van Gogh’s paintings of olive groves. Curators Nienke Bakker (Van Gogh Museum) and Nicole R. Myers (Dallas Museum of Art), launched a collaborative project to research all works in the series in detail.
The exhibition Van Gogh and the Olive Groves reunited for the very first time the important series of paintings and drawings that Van Gogh dedicated to olive trees. This impressive group of works, produced during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, reveals the artist’s passionate investigation of the expressive powers of colour, line, and subject.
Van Gogh and the Olive Groves is a collaboration between the Van Gogh Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art, where the exhibition was held until 6 February 2022. Over the years, Van Gogh’s fifteen paintings of olive trees have become scattered around the world. Three of these works are now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, the others are in museums in Europe and the United States and in a private collection.
From 2018 to 2021, an international research team led by Van Gogh Museum paintings conservator Kathrin Pilz, in collaboration with the conservators of the eleven collections that are home to these works, conducted comparative research into Van Gogh’s painting technique and the materials he used in this series. Of particular interest were questions related to the artist's working method in the studio versus painting outdoors in front of the motif, his use of unstable pigments, and whether technical examination could help resolve the sequence in which the paintings were produced.
Group photo of the research team at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo Evan Read.
