The seminars have been jointly organized since 2007 by the Van Gogh Museum and the University of Amsterdam, as part of the Art History Master’s course. The aim is to encourage students to perform in-depth study of an important theme relating to the Van Gogh Museum’s collection.
Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow
Every year, a leading art historian is invited to lead a seminar as part of the programme ‘Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow in the History of Nineteenth-Century Art’.
Visiting Fellow 2025
This year's Visiting Fellow is Professor Linda Goddard of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Her lecture on Sunday, 22 June 2025, was titled Painting and the Diary in Nineteenth-Century France.
In this lecture, she explored the writings of women artists who lived in or travelled to France in the late 19th century, with a focus on Marie Bashkirtseff, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot.
At a time when canonical works of French literature promoted an image of the artist as a heroic male genius, women navigated the constraints and possibilities of their own artistic identities in diaries and letters.
Instead of focusing on the negative portrayals by novelists and caricaturists, who depicted female artists as amateurs or aberrations, this lecture examined how, through their own words, they engaged with the challenges and opportunities of their profession. In forms that were often both creative and strategic, women wrote their own influential script of the artist’s life, which in turn shaped how later generations of women artists defined themselves.
About Linda Goddard
Linda Goddard is a specialist in 19th- and 20th-century French art and literature, and artists’ writings. She holds a BA in French and Italian language and literature from the University of Oxford and an MA and PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
Her most recent book, Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin (Yale University Press, 2019) is the first book-length analysis of the artist’s wide-ranging literary output.
Goddard has edited or co-edited two journal special issues devoted to the interpretation of artists’ writings: Artists’ Writings, 1850-present (Word & Image), including her essay, ‘Artists’ Writings: word or image?’ and (with Natalie Adamson) Artists’ Statements: Origins, Intentions, Exegesis (Forum for Modern Language Studies), both 2012.
She recently began a new project on the life writings of women artists, in 19th-century France and beyond.
In 2024 the Visiting Fellow was Debora Silverman, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of History and Art History, UCLA, and University of California Presidential Chair in Modern European History, Art and Culture.
In the lecture on 16 June 2024, she discussed the intriguing and multifaceted story behind the ‘Stoclet frieze’, created by Gustav Klimt in a Brussels palace between 1905 and 1911.
In 2023, the subject was the always fascinating relationship between Van Gogh and Gauguin, especially as reflected in their artistic legacies. Prof Belinda Thomson (Honorary Professor Edinburgh College of Art) was hosting the seminar Curating their Legacies. The Packaging and Presentation of Van Gogh and Gauguin.
The theme was the enduringly fascinating relationship between Van Gogh and Gauguin, particularly as it played out in their artistic legacies. While Van Gogh was sceptical of ambition and felt Gauguin to be far more motivated by dreams of success, both artists were destined to achieve posthumous recognition beyond their wildest dreams.
In the lecture on Sunday 11 June 2023, Van Gogh versus Gauguin: Friendship, Competition, Rivalry; Simplification, Distortion, Drama, Belinda Thomson explored how Van Gogh and Gauguin are often compared with each other.
Prof Frances Fowle (University of Edinburgh and National Galleries of Scotland) gave a seminar entitled: Women collectors of 19th-century art: influence, philanthropy, exchange.
In 2021 our Visiting Fellow was Prof. Emeritus Dario Libero Gamboni (University of Geneva, Switzerland). Gamboni completed his studies at the University of Lausanne and EHESS, Paris. He has published widely on various areas of nineteenth-century art history, with a focus on the period around 1900.
One of his recent topics has been artists’ and collectors’ museums, the subject of this year’s online lecture on 6 June. Watch the full lecture on YouTube.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the planned Visiting Fellow for 2020 could not take place.
Prof. dr. Neil McWilliam has given a seminar entitled Tradition and Identity: The Nation in 19th-Century Art. During this series, the question was examined to what extent nationalism manifested itself in nineteenth-century art.
Frances Connelly, Ph.D., Professor of Modern Art at the University of Missouri-Kansas City has given a seminar entitled: The Grotesque in Late Nineteenth-Century.
Prof. Willa Silverman, Mailvin E. and Lea Porfessor of French and Jewish Studies, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA. The title of her seminar was: Art and Life in Belle Époque Paris: Collectors, Decorative Artists, Esthetics.
Prof. dr. Richard Thomson, Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at The University of Edinburgh, gave a seminar entitled: The Low Life of Paris and the High Culture of France. Some Themes and Questions, 1850-1914.
Prof. em. Reinhold Heller, The University of Chicago, Edvard Munch : Vincent Van Gogh. Explorations of Affinity, Influences and Reputations.
Dr Gloria Groom, The Art Institute of Chicago, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.
Prof. Michael Zimmerman, Katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Cézanne – Reinventing the Still-Life Tradition. Opticality, Reality, Allegory.
Prof. Petra ten Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University, In Search of the ‘Pleasing, Saleable…’. Marketing Contemporary Art in Nineteenth-Century Europe and America.
Prof. John House, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Horizontal History. Rethinking Later Nineteenth-Century French Painting.
Prof. Gabriel P. Weisberg, University of Minnesota, Illusions of Reality.
Prof. June Hargrove, University of Maryland, Paul Gauguin: Decorating our Dream.
Prof. Patricia Mainardi, City University of New York, Word & Image 1780–1900.
Prof. Richard Thomson, University of Edinburgh, Style versus the State: Naturalism and Avant-gardism in France, 1885–1900.
Berthe Morisot, ‘Young Girl Writing’, 1891, Wikimedia Commons