Student Essay

Kate Brayley

This essay was written by an M.A. student in a Museum Practice seminar in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. The seminar was taught by Dr. Loren Lerner with the assistance of Dina Vescio, a M.A. graduate of the program.

Vincent van Gogh’s Irises

Iris, painted in 1889 was one of the first works created by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) shortly after he voluntarily committed himself to an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France (fig. 1). In this painting van Gogh gives his own interpretation of the iris’s natural forms by reducing the flower to its basic structure and colours. The deep blues and purples of the petals draw you toward the small blossoms while the vibrant greens of the stems and grass lead your eyes out and around the canvas. In a letter to his brother Theo in February of 1890, van Gogh wrote that he believed he could “venture even further, dropping reality and making a kind of music of tones with colour.”¹ Van Gogh had little formal art education; rather, he read art manuals and studied the paintings and prints of artists he admired. The flat colours and strong lines in this work demonstrate the artists’ interest in Japonisme, which provided him with a model of complementary colour contrast (fig. 2).² As well, the Japanese art of nihon-ga in its variation of lines and expressive brushwork showed van Gogh how to suggest three-dimensionality without the traditional use of shading.³ Van Gogh’s paintings have inspired generations of Canadian artists. The sections that follow explore the flower paintings of two artists from different eras indebted to van Gogh, Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) and Sam Borenstein (1908-1969).

Franklin Carmichael’s Iris

Franklin Carmichael, born in Orillia, Ontario, was a founding member of the Group of Seven in 1920. He was also one of the most accomplished printmakers in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s.⁴ Flowers were a favorite subject for Carmichael although they rarely appear in his oil painting. Rather they were a central theme for his printmaking which was, more than anything, a personal practice.⁵ The amount of detail in Penciled Iris from 1934 exemplifies Carmichael’s ability in this medium (fig. 3). It is considered the artist’s most complex coloured lino-cut block print. Like van Gogh, who first viewed the irises in the gardens at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence through the window of his room, Carmichael took inspiration from the iris flowers that he grew in his garden, that he could see from the window of his studio.⁶ The flat colour and bold decorative line in Penciled Iris recalls the influence of the Japanese printmaking tradition which is also known to have influenced the work of van Gogh. It is likely that Iris by van Gogh was in fact a direct inspiration for Carmichael. stylized nature and strong composition of Penciled Iris speaks to Carmichael’s training in graphic design. Yet in this work he also portrays an intimate view of these delicate flowers, expressed in the fine lines of the purple veins at the edges of the individual petals. Carmichael has also elegantly captured the soft ruffle of the iris petals in full bloom. Although flat in nature, the layering and blending of soft lilac, cream and warm yellow colours convey Carmichael’s powers of observation and interpretation. Carmichael’s artistic philosophy also echoes van Gogh’s. His main concern was to create a work that was parallel to his experience in nature as opposed to a realistic depiction.⁷ Carmichael suggests that art is not meant to be a simple representation of form: It is imperative that the artist reveal through the medium in which he is happiest, what he sees, thinks and feels about his surroundings. It is his business through keener powers of observation and a natural sensitivity that he draws your attention to those finer aspects, moods and the feelings attached to [the things] with which we are surrounded. The medium an artist chooses [is] as much a part of himself as his choice of subject matter.⁸

Sam Borenstein’s Sunflowers

When Sam Borenstein immigrated from Kalvaria, Lithuania to Montreal in 1921 he had little time for art education. Reflecting on what encouraged him to become an artist, he states: “Somehow, I had a feeling that through van Gogh it would be possible to become a painter without a background in formal art training.”⁹ Like van Gogh, Borenstein’s paintings demonstrate an interest in colour as an expressive element and the vigorous handling of paint to infuse the painting with strong feeling. The textured surfaces of Borenstein’s canvases and animated quality of the brushstrokes appear to convey the emotional character of the object being depicted. Like van Gogh colour is also used as the “immediate bearer of non-naturalistic expressive factors.”¹⁰ For Borenstein, the abstracting of representational forms was done to emphasize the importance of texture and colour as the primary means for expressing a sensory experience.¹¹ The commonalities between van Gogh and Borenstein are best understood through their flower paintings. Van Gogh’s Iris can be understood as a retreat from anxieties. When he first arrived at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence for the treatment of his psychosis he was restricted from leaving the grounds. The gardens of the asylum provided ample material for his paintings and the iris soon became a favorite subject. For Borenstein, the sunflower played a prominent role in defining the artist’s comprehension of the human spirit in its relation to the natural world. Borenstein’s wife Judith planted and harvested sunflowers every year. In Sunflowers I (1957) Borenstein portrays an intimate view of these vibrant sunflower blossoms (fig. 4). The brilliant yellows and oranges of the sunflowers glow against the thick vertical bands of mottled blues in the background. By employing a shallow depth of field, the artist is able to express his immediate and intense familiarity with the subject.¹² Connecting the work of Vincent van Gogh, Franklin Carmichael and Sam Borenstein is a fondness for the natural forms of nature, in particular the flower. Using their own unique approach to colour, composition and technical approach, van Gogh, Carmichael and Borenstein, have left a legacy of works that demonstrate their understanding of the pure forms of nature. More than a realistic depiction each work expresses the artist’s emotional interaction with the natural environment.

Illustrations

fig. 1 Vincent van Gogh, Iris, 1889, oil on thinned cardboard, mounted on canvas, 62.2 x 48.3 cm, National Gallery of Canada. (Photo: National Gallery of Canada {http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_zoom_e.jsp?mkey=3779})

fig. 2 Katsushika Hokusai, Iris Flowers and Grasshopper, 1830, colour woodblock print, 9.75 x 14.25 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Photo: 74.1.212, Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

fig. 3 Franklin Carmichael, Penciled Iris, ca. 1925-1932, colour linocut on laid paper, 30.6 x 20.6 cm, National Gallery of Canada. (Photo: National Gallery of Canada {http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_zoom_e.jsp?mkey=42035}

fig. 4 Sam Borenstein, Sunflower I, 1957, oil on canvas, 102 x 76 cm, private collection. (Photo: Loren Lerner, Sam Borenstein (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Art, 2005) 63))

Notes

1. National Gallery of Canada, “Masterpiece in Focus: Van Gogh’s Irises,” Vernissage 1:3 (Summer 1999) 6.
2. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh: His Paris Period 1886-1888 (Utrecht: Editions Victorine, 1976) 107.
3. Yamada Chisaburo, “Exchange of Influences in the Fine Arts Between Japan and Europe,” Dialogue in Art: Japan and the West, ed. Yamada Chisaburo and Omori Tatsuji (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 2001) 13.
4. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh: His Paris Period 1886-1888 (Utrecht: Editions Victorine, 1976) 107.
5. Catharine M. Mastin, Pencilled Iris: A Print by Franklin Carmichael (Windsor: The Art Gallery of Windsor, 1991) 1.
6. Megan Bice, Light and Shadow: The Work of Franklin Carmichael (Kleinburg, Ont: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1990) 76; and Mastin, 1.
7. Mastin, 2.
8. William Kuhns, “A Biographical Sketch,” Sam Borenstein, William Kuhns and Léo Rosshandler (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1978) 170.
9. Bice, 39.
10. Kuhns, 39.
11. Kurt Badt, “Van Gogh and Color Theory,” (1961) Van Gogh in Perspective, ed. Welsh-Ovcharov (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974) 135.
12. Loren Lerner, Sam Borenstein (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2005) 57.
13. Lerner, 60.