University’s own Van Gogh etching to go on display this Tuesday

Samantha McCartney
Contributing Writer

Already known as one of the best public art schools in the country, VCU can add to its list of achievements the possession of an original etching by famed painter Vincent Van Gogh.

The etching, titled “Man with a Pipe (Dr. Gatchet),” will be on display at Cabell Library on Tuesday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Although it was donated to VCU’s Anderson Gallery in 1974, the true value of the work went unnoticed – until it was unexpectedly found almost two decades later in a completely different place.

“I believe it was the 1990s,” said Cliff Edwards, Ph.D., professor of philosophy and religious studies. “I was in the President’s House on Franklin waiting to meet with him. I looked in a corner, and I saw a strange little dark thing. … No one seemed to realize where it was, much less what it was.”

This “strange little dark thing,” he realized, was an impression of the single etching Van Gogh did in his life.

Although Van Gogh made several of these impressions, the piece is no less valuable. Its subject is Van Gogh’s doctor, one of his only friends in the last 70 days of his life. After Edwards recognized it, the work was sent away to verify that it was indeed a work by Van Gogh.

The display of the etching at Cabell Library is perfectly timed with VCUarts’ current focus on the “Mystery of Van Gogh,” which includes an exhibit that opened at Art6 gallery this past Friday. VCUarts students were asked to independently interpret and recreate two lost Van Gogh paintings of Jesus at Gesthemane, based on only the few available descriptions and what they thought the paintings would have looked like had they survived. Around 20 of these interpretations were chosen to be displayed at Art6 Gallery this past Friday, along with other artists who chose to take on the task.

Other events throughout the week will commemorate the public display of the etching. On Tuesday Professor Edwards will speak at Cabell Library at 3 p.m., and also on Wednesday in the Richmond Salons at 7 p.m. He intends to discuss his upcoming book on the “ghost paintings” and his findings through research on the topic of Van Gogh.

Edwards has been teaching at VCU since 1975, and although he is a religious studies professor, that interest is exactly what began his journey as a Van Gogh expert.
About 40 years ago he went to Japan to do work with art in Zen Buddhism; and he visited a Zen master in Kyoto at a monastery.

“I was asking him if I could see a famous piece of art (at the monastery), and he laughed and asked, ‘Why is it that you Westerners want to see this piece of art?’”

A Japanese gallery had just bought one of Van Gogh’s many iconic paintings of sunflowers, and so it puzzled the monk as to why Edwards was so interested in Eastern art, when there was so much western art to explore, Edwards said.

Edwards said the monk asked him to solve a “koan,” a type of puzzle, in order to see the artwork. But the monk’s comments, he said, inspired him to travel the world, collecting knowledge of Van Gogh and his works. He eventually wrote four books with the vast amount of information he discovered. Now, he says, that knowledge will give him the opportunity to educate others.

Van Gogh’s etching will be displayed at the Special Collections and Archives section on the fourth floor of Cabell Library.