Vincent van Gogh: Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy in Focus

The Gothenburg Museum of Art’s painting Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy (1889), by Vincent van Gogh, belongs to a series of fifteen works with olive groves as motifs that van Gogh painted during a period towards the end of his life when he lived in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. During the years 2019-2022, the work has been part of a unique international exhibition and research project in which all the paintings in van Gogh’s series of olive groves have been subject to in-depth analysis.

Now, the Gothenburg Museum of Art’s OIive Grove, Saint-Rémy is on display in a separate presentation along with a film reporting the results of this research. The film provides behind-the-scenes insight into the art conservation analysis and places van Gogh’s work with the series of olive groves in an art historical context. Read more about the research project on the museum’s website.

After the artist’s death, his works were taken care of by his brother Theo van Gogh. Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy was a personal favourite of Theo’s and he made sure that it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in Spring 1890. In 1917, the work was acquired by Axel Romdahl, then Director of the Gothenburg Museum of Art, on a purchasing trip to Paris. Thanks to donations from individual benefactors of art, van Gogh’s work entered the collection. This iconic work became the starting point for the first-class collection of French painting at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Claude Monet, among others.

The project is a collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Christmas
The museum is closed on 24, 25, 26, 31 December and 1 January. Read more.