Curators
Kathleen M. Morris, associate director for exhibitions and collections management, and Michael Brand, director
From the museum website
In conjunction with the loan exhibition Bonjour Monsieur Courbet!: The Bruyas Collection from the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is organizing an exhibition that focuses on the intense intellectual and artistic exchange between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin around the time of their visit to the Bruyas collection in December 1888.
Van Gogh and Gauguin worked together in the south of France for a few months in the fall of 1888, as part of van Gogh’s long-held dream to establish a studio in which painters could collaborate and find inspiration. This focused exhibition will bring together paintings by the two artistic masters reflecting the impact they had on each other’s art during and after their experiment in Arles.
The exploration of this critical episode in the careers of van Gogh and Gauguin will provide a fascinating counterpart to the exhibition of the Bruyas collection. Many of the paintings from Montpellier that sparked heated discussions and disagreements between the two artists will be shown in the exhibition Bonjour Monsieur Courbet!