English-speakers now have the perfect alternative to find the lifetime of Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law Jo Bonger, who preserved and promoted the artist’s work. Two years in the past, the primary biography was printed by the Dutch specialist Hans Luijten—and it’s now popping out within the UK and the US in November. In additional than 500 pages, Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Girl Who Made Vincent Well-known presents an interesting and detailed account of her astonishing life.
Johanna (Jo) Bonger (1862-1925) ended up taking part in a fully essential position within the Van Gogh story. In December 1888, the month that Vincent mutilated his ear, she encountered Theo, Vincent’s youthful brother. They fell in love and, inside days, turned engaged.
The couple married in Amsterdam in April 1889, establishing dwelling in Paris, and in January 1890 that they had a son, whom they named Vincent after the artist. It was to be a tragically temporary life collectively, with their happiness initially overshadowed by the catastrophe of the ear incident.
Vincent, the artist, dedicated suicide in July 1890 and 6 months later Theo died of what was in all probability syphilis, in horrible agony. Just one portray is definite to have been bought throughout Vincent’s lifetime, so the overwhelming majority of his surviving works handed first to Theo after which quickly afterwards to Jo and her toddler son. From then onwards, Jo devoted the remainder of her life to her two Vincents: her son and the reminiscence of her brother-in-law.
Because the biography data, Jo Bonger started by lending footage to exhibitions within the Nineties, to unfold data concerning the artist. In 1905, she organised a Van Gogh retrospective in Amsterdam. Comprising of 443 works, that is nonetheless the most important exhibition ever to be held of his work. Amongst different main exhibits she supported was one in every of Fashionable artwork in Cologne in 1912, often called the Sonderbund exhibition (the 22 loans included the Sunflowers [August 1888]).
Bonger additionally cannily promoted gross sales of some Van Gogh works, dispersing items to personal collections and later to museums—and thereby elevating his profile. Though Bonger’s minimal expertise of the artwork world all got here from her temporary marriage to Theo, who was a vendor, Luijten data that she “realized to play the market shrewdly”.
Her perseverance was for idealistic causes. Because the biography explains: “Before everything, she wished, come what might, to finish the duty that Theo had set himself in 1890—publicising Vincent’s artwork. Secondly, and no much less importantly to her, she supported the socialist view that artwork may elevate folks.”
I’ve questioned whether or not a subsidiary motive in promoting Vincent’s artwork may need been to supply an earnings. However Luijten factors out that Bonger had appreciable investments, partly from her time with Theo, so “she by no means actually wanted the cash from gross sales”.
Bonger’s third means of selling Vincent’s work and legacy was to publish his revealing letters, which offer a deep perception into his life and artwork. The primary complete volumes had been printed in Dutch in 1914.
An enchanting level that emerges within the biography is the remark that Bonger switched her efforts after 1914 to advertise Van Gogh’s work in Britain and the USA. Collectors there had been late to return underneath the artist’s spell (the US angle is explored in an exhibition in Detroit, Van Gogh and America, till 22 January 2023). As Luijten places it, Bonger positioned an emphasis on Anglo-American gross sales within the hope that this could “stimulate curiosity about his letters”.
Concentrating on an Anglo-American viewers helps to clarify why Van Gogh’s biggest model of the Sunflowers (August 1888) got here to London’s Nationwide Gallery. In October 1923, Bonger was loathed to half with the floral still-life, arguing that the Sunflowers belonged “in our household”. She had seemed on the image “day-after-day for greater than 30 years”.
Luijten places ahead an attention-grabbing concept on why, some weeks later, Bonger relented and agreed to a sale: she got here to grasp that the presence of the Sunflowers within the UK’s biggest gallery may assist to encourage a writer for an English translation of Van Gogh’s letters.
Bonger on the time owned two variations of the Sunflowers with a yellow background, and I’ve typically questioned why she reluctantly agreed to half with the best instance. This was the unique model painted in August 1888 for Paul Gauguin’s bed room within the Yellow Home. She additionally owned a replica that the artist made in January 1889. The copied Sunflowers was saved and is now the star attraction within the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Luijten’s analysis means that she wished the perfect model to signify Van Gogh in England.
Through the negotiations on the sale, Bonger had written to Jim Ede—a younger curator on the Nationwide Gallery’s department at Millbank (now Tate). “In the event you learn the English translation of the letters, your enthusiasm would nonetheless improve”, she wrote. Discovering a writer was on the forefront of her thoughts.
In February 1924, because the sale was concluded, Jo’s son Vincent recorded that his mom had completed the interpretation, “however to this point no English writer was sufficiently ”. He then added: “Little doubt the current exhibition and the photographs within the Nationwide Gallery will stimulate… the curiosity in Van Gogh.”
And so it was to be. Bonger started discussions with two publishers, Constable & Co (London) and Houghton Mifflin (New York). Sadly, she didn’t dwell lengthy sufficient to witness the precise publications. The supply of a contract got here by a month after her loss of life in September 1925, on the age of 62, and the 2 volumes had been printed two years later.
However what about the remainder of the household assortment? Surprisingly, there’s nothing to recommend that Jo and her son Vincent ever mentioned the opportunity of establishing a museum. After many a long time, it did ultimately go forward, along with her son generously reaching an settlement with the Dutch state in 1962, resulting in the opening of the Van Gogh Museum in 1973.
As Luijten factors out, it stays “puzzling and inexplicable, nevertheless, why he [Bonger’s son Vincent] made completely no point out of his mom’s identify in his speech on the museum’s opening”—contemplating all that she had performed for her brother-in-law. Household dynamics can stay obscure, even to biographers.
Luijten’s magnificent tribute to Bonger concludes: “Due to her unbridled efforts, she unmistakably contributed to Van Gogh attaining a long-lasting place of honour in cultural historical past.”