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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, rough you by braille. I am Emily Tamkin, and this week we will be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. I'm speaking today with Tai Oh, Meiten derp. He is the senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and he, along with Eve Fesser, who was the general commissioner at the Mon's Cultural Capital of Europe in 2015, wrote the article A Case of Mistaken Identity, concerning the photographic portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, age 13.
They wrote it for the journal, Oucholang. Tai Oh, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Thank you. So to start off before we really dig into the meat of the article, very early on in the piece, you called a painted self-portrait a selfie, which I love.
You then say that selfies don't always provide a faithful likeness, but I was thinking about it, and even today on Instagram or whatever, artistry does sometimes overtake likeness, right? When you think of the famous celebrities, influencers, do you think of today's selfies being in tradition of Vincent Van Gogh? Well, maybe perhaps a little bit. I think in perhaps more than a limited way.
I always have asked, of course, for the selfie, what's it made for? What's the purpose? Is it so fun? Is it perhaps showing that you're a creative?
I mean, then the selfie, but people make by by the telephone and things. And of course, you can also work on something like you want to convey some kind of mood or you're in or whatever. In that sense, of course, it comes close to painted self-portraits and how an artistry can research himself in the term of portraits and making his own selfie self-portrait, you might say. With Vincent, it's like you can more or less decide his self-portrait in two categories or areas in the fact that it has to do with his, he didn't make a self-portrait before he went to Paris, for instance.
So it's an 80, 85, 80 went to Paris, but before that time from the Dutch period, we don't have a self-portrait or any hinting in this correspondence that he was working on one. So it starts in Paris and then, and that's the most of them. I mean, there are about, well, almost 35 self-portraits by Vincent and the larger batches and certainly all of them are from the Paris period. And then the Paris period is a period of transition with Vincent.
It's when he gets out of this darker Dutch period into the brighter, the coloristic, later French period and that's where his whole planet changes. Of course, with the kind of change, he has to work on stylized landscapes and books and everything, of course, and also in figure painting and portrait painting. But people probably not know so much. In deep down, Vincent wanted to be a portrait painter and a figure painter, but it was always difficult to get models for himself.
I mean, he was not easy to go on to get along with, but of course, you yourself are your cheapest model. So you buy a mirror and you can make a lot of portraits. And does Paris portrait, certainly, sense in tradition of experimenting with color, with brush stroke, but also with painting as the person looking is he angry, is he more like, well, if he don't have happy portraits by Vincent, perhaps, or he tries to capture a kind of mood. It's like a Rembrandt in the 70th century, but he had put a particular Tony, so these images of a certain type of looking, looking angry, looking happy or laughing and things like that.
But later in Paris, especially his last portrait that he did, self-portray behind the easel, that one was, you must say, a more deliberate self-portray. That was a farewell from Paris, self-portray. He first went afterwards as a self-portray where he himself looks ill. And he was ill because of that food and all the wine and drinking in Paris.
And he was escaping to the south. And the ones that he did afterwards, self-portrays, much more focused, so there was one that made for Gauguin, where he portrays himself as a Buddhist. There are the ones, of course, with the bandage, yeah, which is disabled. I'm still here.
And then the ones that he did in Saint-Amis, so to show again afterwards, that he was still there. And they portrayed a certain mood. And they had literally entered that. So there's a whole range, you might say, to himself, what he's seen, and he was quite aware of that.
Moving into the actual, the meat of the article, how did you and Eve decide to write about this, to try to determine if this isn't Vincent Van Gogh? Well, it became from two different directions. So first we had in 2014, the television program was made in Netherlands, focusing on Vincent Van Gogh on a couple of photographs. It was a photograph that was supposedly image of Vincent.
And in the TV, some scientists were asked to make comparisons with these photographs and available photographs of Vincent. And there were only two. So there was the one that was 13 years old and there was a photograph of when he was 19 years old. So there were two photographs.
They were compared with the scientificy. And the outcome was, is that the one that was discovered was not Vincent. But the other thing was, as well, the other two were also not related to the same person. And this came as a price.
So this was our angle, you might say. And we dive into it and say, I mean, this is the first report, but this is possible. I mean, these are both Vincent's. But then these are two questions.
Well, where does it come from? I mean, who identified the these persons as Vincent and the younger one and the older one. And so he started building into that. And he did exactly the same from a other angle because he was based in Brussels.
He was working on the exhibition on Fachofen-Bore-Reinigen 2015 in France. And the photograph was, he was an inside photograph of Vincent with the address of a photographer underneath, which was a photographer in Brussels. And he wanted to know more about his photographer. And he found out that this photographer was only in Brussels from 1870 onwards.
So this was a portrait of a 13-year-old Vincent. And then in 1870, Vincent would have been 17 years old. But this was not the head of a 17. So he started digging from that angle.
And then he came to the van Gogh Museum. I found it. I think it's not Vincent. I think it's his brother.
And how do you look at it? In fact, in our old research came back again. And then we decided, well, we should join hands and write this article together. Right.
Join forces. Join forces. Yeah. I mean, as a spoiler for listeners, when you joined forces or hands, what you found was that what was thought to be a photo of young Vincent is actually a brother Theo.
And now you get into this in the paper, but could you give listeners a sense of how this mix of happens in the first place? And also since it was first identified in 1957, and questions about who was actually in the photo didn't arise until 2014, what took so long? Yeah. When we look into it, I mean, so when we did something from the TV program, for instance, I wanted to know for what does the identification come from?
That's not going to be found out it was in 1957 that this image was published. We thought it was, well, it is in the family. So it's come somewhere from a family album. We didn't know yet which one.
So this is what we started researching. In fact, we had two images, two copies of this photograph of a certain drill Vincent. And then we thought it was exactly one day take coming to our collection. So one appeared to be from a photo album of Theo himself.
So he could very often have an image of his older brother as a child in this, in his album. But the other one, and that was the one that was first published in 1957, came from the one of the one of the sisters of Vincent and Theo. So from that lecture, also a family of the ladies, of course, so it could then be either. But the one who did make the identification was somewhat organized in exhibition in 1957.
And you might say, and that was one of the first of the very documentary exhibition on all kinds related to the family, Theo for Vincent. And then this picture got up and the man who made this exhibition, which was called Mark Adolf Taldau, he was a Belgian for a host researcher. He was in contact with the family of his sister of Vincent. And they gave him all kinds of archivalia, you might say, that they had in their possession.
But they themselves did not know what exactly it was. So he was troubled. And it was responsible for publishing his photograph until then. So before 1957, there was only one photograph now in the Vincent.
And that's the other one, but he was 19 years old. And from this one, we were very sure because this one was used by Theo's widow, Yoh, to publish as the only known photograph of Vincent in 1914 with the letters. So that was still then the only known photograph of Vincent. And all of a sudden, of course, the 52nd one is a new one discovered, and only one.
And everybody for the photograph was right. And nobody had a question. Because there was no need to question. And that has to do with the images.
When you compare the image of the younger, first and Europe one, you might say, with Vincent, the 19-year-old one, you can see that there are similarities. But when you realize that this photograph has to be at least from 18-17 years old, it's quite clear that the young boy is not 17. He might be over 13, but he's not 17. And then when he started researching, what do we know about the...
What they look like, both boys. And then it's interesting to know that Vincent himself in 1883, and that makes a wonderful comparison of them both, as they are so much alike. I mean, as well as in character, as well as how they look alike. And there's only one thing is that Theo slightly, he has slightly finer features.
So, he says, he says, I've run high forehead. It's not the slow thing. The Vincent is a smaller line, you might say. But it's most important, the eyes are different.
So, they both have very blue-ish green eyes, but Theo's are much lighter. Now, when you compare the photographs, especially if we have more photographs of Theo, luckily, we have only one, just one from 19-year-old, Vincent. But we have about five photographs of Theo in different ages. We have 13, 20, 21, 32.
And one's trying to feature is indeed, is that these very light eyes. This gives him a certain impression. And when you compare the photograph of the 13-year-old, Vincent, you might say, you quite see that's not Vincent because he has darker green-blue eyes. And it's very bright, I say, it's quite offensive.
And it has to be Theo. And that matches, again, that's what he found. Of course, when he researched the Brussels photographer, who only started in 1870, only addressed, given on the photograph. And Theo started working in Brussels in 1873, when he was 15 years old, almost 16.
And he had this photograph made exactly the same time when Vincent had his 19-year-old photograph made, because it was the present to the father. It was birthday, it was in February, again, 51. And that made the circle around, you might say. So, this case of mistake, no, that's the case on somebody in the 1950s, before it was Vincent.
And nobody had a question because it could very well be possible. Right, nobody thought to. That is fascinating. And if you want to hear about how the mystery was finally solved, you should read a case of mistaken identity concerning the photographic portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, age 13, in the journal, Ouch Holland.
It was written by Tylo Meidunar, senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, with whom I was speaking today. And Eve Fesser, the general commissioner of the Monstral Capital of Europe 2015. Tylo, thank you once again for being with me today and speaking about your excellent article. Thank you, Emily.
Thank you.