Toespraak bij onthulling teruggekeerde schilderijen Van Gogh

Toespraak | 21-03-2017

Excellency’s, ladies and gentlemen,

In the month of August eighteen-eighty-two the Dutch coast was struck by a ferocious storm.
The young Vincent van Gogh walked to the sea near the fishing village of Scheveningen. He set up his easel at the edge of the dunes and started painting. Defying the howling wind and whirling sand, he committed the storm to canvas.
‘View of the Sea at Scheveningen’, one of his first paintings, depicts the “clash of the waters” – as he called it in a letter to his brother Theo – in his characteristic, rough strokes – reminiscent of the ‘furrows in a ploughed field’.

By doing so Van Gogh takes us back to the world of yesterday, when fishing was full of danger, especially in the face of nature’s fury.
The day’s catch was sometimes paid in human lives.
In Van Gogh’s painting we see a fishing boat that has just managed to reach the shore. A wagon is ready to unload the cargo of fish.
Village women stand at the water’s edge to greet their husbands and sons.
A safe journey, in the eye of the storm.  

Of the seventy paintings that Van Gogh created in The Hague, the
View of the Sea at Scheveningen - owned by the state - is the only one in this museum’s permanent collection. As Axel Ruger just told, Van Gogh was at that time apprenticed to Anton Mauve, and he drew inspiration from other  painters in The Hague such as Mesdag, Maris and Israels.
But his subjects and style of painting were already unique.

In his early years, Van Gogh focused on the lives of the working class.
Weavers.
Miners.
Fishermen.
And potato eaters.
A life of hard work.
A study of life as it truly was.
And as it would likely always remain, for the people he painted.
Captured forever by the hand of Van Gogh.

This quote from a letter makes clear that Van Gogh had found his true
profession:
 
“There is something infinite about painting – I can’t quite explain it –
but especially for expressing a mood, it’s a delight.
The colours conceal elements of harmony and contrasts that work to-gether naturally, and are of no benefit if left unused.”

Two men climbed a ladder to the roof of the Van Gogh Museum, in December two-thousand-two. They broke a hole in the window on the first floor, crawled through and cut two early works by Van Gogh from their frames. They climbed down a rope and escaped into the cold, dark morning.
The thieves were too quick for the guards and the police.
They took two canvasses: View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Con-gregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen.

Why these paintings?
One of the thieves, Octave B., recently said, ‘thick paint is more ex-pensive, at least I think it is.’ And: ‘that church looked like it might be worth something.’
They chose small paintings, easy to stuff into a rucksack.

The thieves were caught, tried and punished three years later.
But the paintings had been sold off,
removed from the public domain, hidden from our eyes.
‘Living a life in darkness’.
For fourteen years.

In February eighteen-eighty-three, Van Gogh returned to his parents in Nuenen, penniless and bitter.
He moved into the rectory near the house, where he continued working on his drawings and paintings, expressing the hard rural life, natural beauty and village scenes - in different ways.
 
As Alex Kruger expressed, The Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, painted by Vincent in those years, was of a huge emotional value to Van Gogh.
His father was the minister in that church – painted by Vincent only once – in that Protestant enclave in the middle of Roman Catholic Brabant. Vincent gave the painting to his mother, who was housebound because of a broken leg.

 After his father’s death Vincent changed the painting.
The peasant in the foreground in the original – which can still be seen on x-rays – made way for church-goers in mourning clothes.
Perhaps this was a tribute to his father.

In late September twenty-sixteen, the Italian police raided the property of a leader of the Camorra, looking for narcotics.
 
They primarily found big-ticket items, including a private plane on the grounds.
One policeman (who is actually with us today!)  discovered a double wall, and behind it, wrapped in sheets, our two Van Goghs.
Instead of a stash of narcotics, they found a treasure of immense public value.
The shock must have been enormous!

I clearly remember the news images of that abandoned ladder against the wall right after the robbery in two-thousand-two.
The hole in the window. The realisation that I could have cycled past the museum on that fateful Saturday morning.
Ten years later when I became the Minister of Culture, the same sense of disquiet returned, but now with greater intensity,
because the theft had torn gaping holes in museum security,
because the theft had torn gaping holes in Vincent’s story as told by the Van Gogh Museum,
because the theft had torn gaping holes in our public heritage.
Our public cultural heritage that is part of our identity.
Mister Tomasso Montanino, I wish to thank you personally:
Your discovery put an end to a collective trauma – as director Axel Rüger puts it – and has returned the paintings to their rightful place, back in the public domain.
Back into the light.
Back to us.

The events of two-thousand-two led to a total re-think of museum se-curity throughout the country. And the fantastic discovery in September twenty-sixteen put the spotlight on both our heritage organisations and law enforcement agencies working together so brilliantly to trace and recover priceless paintings like these.
For fourteen long years you never gave up your quest.
I wish to thank everyone here today from the Netherlands and Italy, for everything you’ve done.
Thanks to you, we can celebrate the return of these paintings.
Today the light has returned to these early works by Van Gogh – with his deep sense of social engagement, his unique colours, the immediacy of his brushstrokes.
The light has returned to Van Gogh’s expression – wild, yet at the same time subtle and poignant.
And the light has returned to the public value of art – a value that can never be expressed in terms of dirty money.   
 

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am very eager to view these paintings together with you, here today.
I am very pleased that  the Sea View and the Church, after today, will again be on public display for everyone to enjoy.
Ánd I am pleased that the hole in this museum’s narrative has finally been repaired.