Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890), The Poplars at Saint-Rémy, 1889. Oil on fabric, 24¼ x 17 15/16 in. The Cleveland Museum of Art; Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., 1958.32

A recent trip to south Florida occasioned what has become a routine sojourn for me, a stopover at the Norton Museum of Art.

At the Norton, van Gogh’s The Poplars at Saint-Rémy is overwhelmed twice, first by its ornate antique frame, then by its installation on the third floor. Softly lit, it inhabits its own grey-painted gallery, a pearl in an oversized jewel box. It doesn’t help that the landscape’s colors are relatively sedate for a late van Gogh, relying on white to suggest terrain bleached by sunlight. The central two poplars are enclosed within a diamond-shaped design circumscribed by skyline above and crossing diagonals of rock-strewn land below. It is an inherently unstable composition, harmonized by color, the blue sky repeated in ground plane shadows and the blanched earth tones picked up in clouds. There is perhaps no way to write about van Gogh’s brushwork, idiosyncratic and instantly recognizable, without resorting to banalities; suffice to say that his sense of urgency demanded an entirely novel handling of paint. The Poplars at Saint-Rémy was made in a single session, a feat of compressed intensity.

Sharing a gallery with two other works by the artist, Degas’s Portrait of Mlle. Hortense Valpinçon resides more comfortably in its ground floor setting. The story of its production is no less remarkable than that of the van Gogh; leaving Paris during the barricades of 1871, Degas arrived at the Valpinçon country home without a canvas, and apprehended some mattress ticking upon which to paint his friend’s nine-year-old daughter. She leans into a sideboard and surveys us with unusual self-possession for one so young, holding in her right hand what has been variously described as a slice of fruit or a coin.

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