Van Gogh, Vincent - Grass with Butterfllies - art postcard

Art Postcard
• Work of art title: Grass with Butterflies
• Artist (if known): Vincent Van Gogh
• Media or other details:  painting
• Publisher / Gallery: National Gallery, London
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp & postmark details (if relevant): na
• Size: modern
• Notes & condition details:

NOTES:

Size: 'Modern' is usually around 6in x 4in / 'Old Standard' is usually around 5 1/2in x 3 1/2in. Larger sizes mentioned, but if you need to know the exact size please ask.

All postcards are not totally new and are pre-owned. It's inevitable that older cards may show signs of ageing and use, particularly sent through the post. Any faults other than normal ageing are noted.

Stock No.: A746

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information:

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James Abbott Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was the first child born to Anna Matilda McNeill and George Washington Whistler, a prominent engineer. She was his father's second wife. At the Ruskin trial (see below), Whistler claimed the more exotic St. Petersburg, Russia as his birthplace: ""I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell"", he declared.^[9] In later years, he would play up his mother's connection to the American South and its roots, and present himself as an impoverished Southern aristocrat (although to what extent he truly sympathized with the Southern cause during the American Civil War remains unclear). After her death, he would adopt her maiden name, using it as an additional middle name.

Young Whistler was a moody child prone to fits of temper and insolence, who—after bouts of ill-health—often drifted into periods of laziness. His parents discovered in his early youth that drawing often settled him down and helped focus his attention.^[10]

Butterflies and moths, in the insect order Lepidoptera, are distinguished generally in several ways: Butterflies are brighter in color and fly in the day. Butterfly wings are not linked and fold together when they are in a resting position. On the other hand, moths are generally duller in color, fly at night and have linked wings. There are some exceptions, though, such as a few types of colored moths.^[1]

Butterflies are found in art and literature, often as symbols of freedom, transformation and life. Van Gogh used butterflies in his works as a symbol of hope.^[2]

One of his favorite metaphors was about transformative possibilities.^[3] In a letter to his sister Wil, Van Gogh says that like a grub eats salad roots, unknowing of the transformation that will take it to a beetle, we are not aware of our potential for metamorphosis. Similarly, he as a ""painter ought to paint pictures; possibly something else will come after that.""^[4] Of prostitutes, such as those he met at brothels, Van Gogh wondered of any woman who fell into a life of degradation: ""She is seeking, seeking, seeking -- does she herself know what? Might she be transformed one day like a grub into a butterfly?""^[3] That hope may have been on Van Gogh's mind when he took in pregnant Sien Hoornik, a prostitute, and her daughter when he lived in The Hague in 1882.^[5]

In a letter to his friend Émile Bernard, Van Gogh uses the miracle of transformation from caterpillar to butterfly to consider what possibilities may be available in the universe: ""However, since nothing confutes the assumption that lines and forms and colours exist on innumerable other planets and suns as well, we are at liberty to feel fairly serene about the possibilities of painting in a better and different existence, an existence altered by a phenomenon that is perhaps no more ingenious and no more surprising than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly or of a grub into a maybug. The existence of a painter-butterfly would be played out on the countless celestial bodies which, after death, should be no more inaccessible to us than the black dots on maps that symbolize towns and villages are in our earthly lives.""^[6]

When in need of solace, nature is where Van Gogh went to find peace. In a letter to his sister Wilhelmina he writes that he finds to calm down it's best to ""look at a blade of grass, the branch of a fir tree, an ear of wheat. So if you want to do, as the artists do, go look at the red and white poppies with their bluish leaves, their buds soaring on gracefully bent stems.""^[7]

Van Gogh came to Arles in southern France when he was about 35 years of age. There he began producing some of his best work. The sunflower paintings, some of the most recognizable of Van Gogh's paintings, were created in this time. This is likely one of Van Gogh's happier periods of life. He is confident, clear-minded and seemingly content.^[8] In a letter to his brother, Theo, he wrote, ""Painting as it is now, promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all, it promises color."" As a means of explanation, Van Gogh explains that being like music means being comforting.^[8]

type=printed postcards

theme=artists signed

sub-theme=art

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted