A Van Gogh at the Frick

by Sparrow    December 25, 2012

 I'd first seen van Gogh's "Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)" in the New York Times, where I immediately despised it. The work looked like a crude forgery of a van Gogh portrait: the bright yellows and greens were there, but the face was a mess -- full of ugly slanting lines with no visual purpose. "A museum will put any van Gogh on their wall, to attract all those women from Westchester," I silently calculated.

Also I was certain I'd never see this painting, because I am fearful of the Frick. But two weeks later my friend Yumeko invited me to the museum, and I found myself waiting in the lobby, five feet from a stunningly pretty Bennington student*, as a light rain fell on Manhattan.

"Are there any special exhibits?" I asked the ticket-taker, when Yumeko and I entered. "There are drawings in the basement, and a van Gogh on the first floor," she replied evenly. Eventually I reached the latter painting, not expecting that same New York Times portrait.

But in person, a painting abandons its newspaper replica. "Portrait of a Peasant" was alive, combative -- more arresting if you stood 15 feet away, actually. Patience was peering out through the mask of his face, fearlessly.

*Bennington is a guess.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Rate It:

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5