Biography
Book Details

A Remarkable Friendship

Vincent Van Gogh and John Peter Russell

Ann Galbally

Ann Galbally traces the passage of the extraordinary and unlikely friendship between Vincent Van Gogh and John Peter Russell.

Awards

Shortlisted for the Magarey Medal for Biography

Opinion

'When writing a biography of two people, it is like painting a double portrait,
where the complexities and the dynamics of the situation increase exponentially…Galbally handles this intricate situation brilliantly as we become involved in the complex lives of Van Gogh and Russell and enter an intriguing reality… We not only feel much better informed
about the work of the two artists, but develop a strange familiarity with the two individuals, as if we had been invited to sit in on some of their most intimate conversations and have privileged access to some of their most private thoughts.'
Sasha Grishin, The Canberra Times 15/11/08

“This might be a footnote in artistic history but Galbally imbues the story with a superb sense of the artistic life of the time.”
The Sydney Morning Herald, 16/8/08

About this Title

A huddle of wooden sheds in a courtyard off the Boulevard Montmartre known as Cormon's atelier was where the handsome art student from Sydney, John Peter Russell, first met the haunted, intense newcomer from Holland, Vincent van Gogh. Both were foreigners in the competitive art world of Paris in the 1880s, and over the next two years both would discover a passion for colour painting.

Now, for the first time, Ann Galbally traces the passage of this extraordinary and unlikely friendship. The two spent hours together in a Paris studio experimenting with the fast-moving changes in art practice. Both artists ultimately rejected the Impressionist's world of urban sophistication and left Paris to develop colour painting in isolation, Van Gogh at Arles in Provence, and Russell on Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany.

With a supporting cast including Gauguin, Rodin, Monet and Matisse this is a journey through the struggles and failures, plots and intrigues of artistic life. A tale of love found and lost and ultimate tragedy, it makes for enthralling reading.

About the Author

Ann Galbally studied at Melbourne University and at the Courtauld Institute, London. She was Associate Professor in art history at Melbourne University until 2003 and now writes full time. Her publications include monographs on Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and John Peter Russell; The Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria (1987); Letters from Smike. The correspondence of Arthur Streeton (with Anne Gray) (1989), and biographies Redmond Barry: An Anglo-Irish Australian (1995) and Charles Conder: The last bohemian, which won The Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2003.

Book Preview

978-0-522-85376-6