The Poet’s Garden – Van Gogh & Antwerp
‘This little piece of park is a good example of what I told you: that in order to grasp the true character of things here, you have to look at them and paint them for a very long time.’
Vincent to Theo van Gogh – Arles, 26 Sept 1888
140 years ago, Vincent van Gogh left Brabant for Antwerp. In the middle of his short career as an artist—he was active for only ten years—Vincent decided to travel to Paris. There he wanted to familiarize himself with the new direction of colourful Impressionism. He made a three-month stop in Antwerp to study drawing from the model at the academy. The period from 24 November 1885 to 28 February 1886 forms an important link in his artistic development. Although the contact with the teachers did not bring him what he had hoped—studying plaster casts and the academic spirit did not suit him—his interactions with fellow students and his stay in the vibrant city provided ample inspiration. He drew nude models and cityscapes, painted portraits, wandered through the harbour area along the quays, visited cafés, and began collecting Japanese prints. He also visited museums, churches, and galleries to study the works of Rubens and other painters. His letters from Antwerp to his brother Theo show that he liked the city and that it left an indelible impression on him: ‘Here I find the friction of ideas that I seek—I gain a fresh eye for my own work, can judge better where the weaknesses lie, and thus progress in improving them.’
During my research into Van Gogh’s time in Antwerp, the academy garden caught my attention. A quiet inner garden that, in Vincent’s time, bordered not only the academy—where he met fellow artists—but also the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, which he often visited to admire the great masters. Vincent painted many gardens and was always deeply attentive to the nature surrounding him. For this reason, the exhibition at NQ Gallery chooses not to highlight the gritty urban life and bustling harbour as a starting point, but rather the natural world in which Vincent always found peace and inspiration.
The poet’s garden refers to a work from Vincent’s period in Arles. Van Gogh travelled there in the winter of 1888 to realise his dream of the Yellow House—a place where artists could live and work together, inspiring one another. Much like the academy in Antwerp, but without the interference of teachers and with each artist working in his own style. Upon arrival it was snowing. The Provençal landscape he had heard so much about lay hidden beneath a layer of white snow, but it carried the promise of spring.
The Yellow House where Vincent lived overlooked a park, which became a “model” in his paintings. The painting of the park was given the name Le poète jardin, the poet’s garden. Through its title, the work invites a more figurative interpretation of the landscape theme. Here it is about love, encounters, attention to nature, and the Renaissance poets Vincent imagined wandering through it.
‘But isn’t it true that this park has a charming style that easily makes you imagine the poets of the Renaissance—Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio—walking among those shrubs on the flowered lawn? I did leave out a few trees, but what I kept in the composition is really there. They have simply overplanted it with certain bushes that do not suit its character; besides, in order to grasp its truer and more essential character, this is the third time I have painted the same spot. Well, that is the park that lies right in front of my house.
But you understand that this gives the place something indefinably Boccaccio-like. And this side of the park is, for reasons of propriety or morality, deprived of flowering shrubs such as oleander. They are plain plane trees, pines in tight shrubbery, a weeping tree and green grass. But it is so intimate!’
Vincent to Theo van Gogh – Arles, 18 Sept 1888
In the exhibition The Poet’s Garden at NQ, you can immerse yourself in flower gardens, tree trunks, exotic realms, and mystical places. You may encounter seas of flowers, or be struck by the underlying idea of the creator—the higher power that seems to hide in everything. The solitary trunk that longs for companionship. Eline de Clercq, who is writing her PhD with one foot in the academy garden, chose a poem by Johanna M. Pas. It captures how one can take root after transplantation, and how one can feel at home in a new environment—or without a home at all.
I turned the garden
into a wilderness
so that in
the wilderness
I could think
I was home
— Johanna M. Pas
Each artist approaches the theme of the garden in their own way. And, as always, it is up to the viewer to choose which path to enter by, and which way to leave. The Poet’s Garden is therefore first and foremost an invitation to lose yourself in paint. To look, just as Vincent did, at nature with attention to everything that grows and blooms—from the showiest roses in the sunlight to the most inconspicuous undergrowth. And then, an invitation to see the world around you with new eyes.