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1958.31
Adeline Ravoux, 1890
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
Netherlands 19th century
Oil on fabric
Unframed h. 50.20 cm w. 50.50 cm
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.31

Adeline Ravoux

In May 1890 Van Gogh left southern France to live in Auvers, a small town just north of Paris, where he rented a room at the inn of Arthur Ravoux. A month after his arrival he painted three portraits of Ravoux's sixteen-year-old daughter, Adeline. Although known for his landscapes, Van Gogh's greatest ambition was to paint portraits. "I should like to paint portraits," he wrote to his sister, "which a hundred years from now will seem to people of those days like apparitions. Thus I do not attempt to achieve this through photographic resemblance, but through our impassioned aspects, using our science and our modern taste for color as a means of expression and of exaltation of color." This painting presents Adeline Ravoux not as an individual, but as a symbol of the eternal woman, set against the infinite blue night like a radiant star.


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