Art Abstract: Vincent Van Gogh

POSTED ON MARCH 30, 2015

If youre looking for the answer to Art Abstracts, its Vincent Van Goghs Portrait
of Alexander Reid.
Today were wishing this iconic artist a Happy Birthday!
Alexander Reid (1854-1928), the Scottish subject of this portrait by Vincent Van
Gogh, was the son of a successful art dealer in Glasgow. Not wanting to join his
fathers business, Reid became an artist but eventually began to show and sell
work by other artists. He befriended Van Gogh in London during the 1870s, when
Reid worked for the international art-dealing firm Goupil & Cie. In 1886, Reid
moved to Paris to work for the same firm, which also employed Vincents brother,
Theo Van Gogh. From the fall of 1886 through the winter of 1887, Reid lived with
the Van Gogh brothers in their Paris apartment, where Van Gogh painted this
portrait of Reid. (Legend has it that Reid hastily moved out of the Van Gogh
apartment after Vincent suggested a suicide pact one night.)
Reid was almost the same age as Van Gogh, and his features are curiously similar
to Van Goghs own, as is also revealed in another portrait of Reid by Van Gogh,
now at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow. A Scottish man who in 1887 knew
both men wrote of their resemblance: The likeness was so marked that they
might have been twins. I have often hesitated, until I got close, as to which of
them I was meeting. They even dressed somewhat similarly, though I doubt if
Vincent ever possessed anything like the Harris tweeds Reid usually wore. In
fact, this painting and the one in Glasgow were once considered Van Gogh selfportraits instead of portraits of Reid.
Portrait of Alexander Reid could be called a painting about friendship. Not only is
it of Van Goghs friend, Reid, but it may also be the actual painting that Vincent
gave to Reid in a gesture of friendship. Moreover, two of the three paintings in
the background have been identified as works by Van Goghs friend Frank Myers
Boggs, an American artist who lived in France; Boggs had given Van Gogh these
paintings as gifts. One of the background paintings depicts Coal Barges on the
Thames, and the other Honfleur Harbor. (The painting between the two works by
Boggs is one of the several portraits of peasant women that Van Gogh painted in
the mid 1880s.) The two paintings by Boggs are now in the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam, and they are inscribed prominently in the lower-left corner of each
canvas (translated): To his friend Vincent/Boggs.
The portrait is also the only surviving historical record of the Paris apartment that
Van Gogh shared with his brother between 1886-1887.
Stop by the Fred Jones to see this work in person!
IMAGE CREDIT
Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands, 1853-1890)
Portrait of Alexander Reid, c. 1887
Oil on panel, 15 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman
Bequest of Aaron M. and Clara Weitzenhoffer, 2000