Restoration for the first Van Gogh painting to enter a public museum

An important painting by Vincent van Gogh, Poplars near Neunen (De Populierenlaan bij Nuenen), will be restored with funds granted by The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) under the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund (TMRF) program, which will benefit the museum that preserves the painting, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. This is TEFAF’s second donation for 2022. The TMRF program was created ten years ago and supports the international art community’s work to preserve artistic and cultural heritage.

For the first time ever, on the occasion of the TMRF’s 10th anniversary, the work, the first by Van Gogh to enter a public museum will be exhibited at the TEFAF Maastricht fair prior to restoration, housed in an ad hoc space at the fair. Then, towards the end of the summer, the restoration project will be started inside the Boijmans’ storage room, where visitors will be able to follow it step by step. The TMRF’s 10-year anniversary celebrations, including the presentation of the van Gogh painting at the Maastricht Fair and dedicated TEFAF Talks, will be carried out in collaboration with ICOM-CC and supported by Aon, TMRF’s Anniversary Supporting Partner.

The TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund supports the restoration and conservation of culturally significant works belonging to museums and institutions around the world. Donations are awarded by an independent committee of experts to institutions and museums that have participated in TEFAF Maastricht or TEFAF New York.

The painting

De Populierenlaan bij Nu enen (“Poplars Near Nuenen”), painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1885, was the first work by the artist to enter the collection of a public museum in 1903, donated by twenty-six friends of the museum. Van Gogh painted the picture in Nuenen in 1885, but is believed to have added additional touches of paint later, once in Paris, effectively making it one of the most important pieces in his body of work.

After nearly 140 years, the painting is in need of restoration: the layers of paint are unstable, partly because van Gogh made it over a pre-existing painting, causing adhesion problems. Therefore, the restoration process will focus on consolidating the unstable paint and whether the varnish can be removed.

The restoration intervention

The intervention will be conducted and supervised by painter and conservator Erika Smeenk-Metz. The Boijmans van Beuningen Museum is currently conducting technical research on the materials used in the painting in collaboration with specialists from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (Agency for Cultural Heritage) and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The investigation is aimed at understanding whether the final varnish can be removed without damaging the original layers of paint in order to improve the aesthetics of the work. This would also allow for a more thorough investigation of the underlying painting, which would appear to depict a tower, probably the Old Tower near Nuenen. Exploration of these layers would provide the first technical evidence that the light touches in the work were added when van Gogh was already in Paris. Such extensive research has never been possible before, and the museum hopes to discover beyond doubt how much of the painting was made in Paris, consequently shedding new light on van Gogh’s work and stylistic development as an artist.

In its 170-year history, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum has grown to include more than 150,000 objects: 63,000 paintings, photographs, films, pre-industrial designs and design objects, contemporary art installations and sculptures, as well as 88,000 prints and drawings. The collection is thus a journey through art history, from the Middle Ages to the 21st century.

“The Boijmans Van Beuningen Depot,” says Sjarel Ex, director of Boijmans van Beuningen, “is equipped with a new tool to take care of Rotterdam’s vast and diverse collection. We are delighted with TEFAF’s support and extremely grateful that the Museum Restoration Fund brings the care of art and heritage from around the world to the forefront, and has been doing so for 10 years already. As a place of research and conservation, the repository is ideally equipped to give this masterpiece the restoration it deserves.”

“The establishment of TEFAF’s Museum Restoration Fund,” says Hidde van Seggelen, president of TEFAF, “has provided invaluable assistance in the conservation of important works of art from around the world, strengthening TEFAF’s commitment to research and academia. It is therefore fitting that, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, the fund has chosen to support a Dutch masterpiece created by one of the world’s best-known artists, thus preserving it for future generations of visitors to the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum.”

Image: Vincent van Gogh, Poplars Near Nuenen (1885; oil on canvas, 78 x 98 cm; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen)

Restoration for the first Van Gogh painting to enter a public museum

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