Visiting the Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam (Netherlands) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Laurent
drove me to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy (France), so I could go on a
business trip to Amsterdam (Netherlands).
I
was staying at the Japanese Okura Hotel, which was the tallest building in
Amsterdam at the time. I was going the
weekend before the meeting to do some tourism.
It took an hour to go from Paris to Amsterdam with no time change by
plane.
As
soon as I arrived at the hotel, I threw my bag on the bed and rushed out to see
as much as I could on Saturday of the city.
I almost got hit a few times by throngs of bicyclists as I made my way
to a tram stop.
The
tram driver spoke perfect English (British, but understandable to an American),
which I did not expect. He told me to
exit at Museumplein to visit the Van Gogh Museum.
A
French woman on the Museumplein saw me with the Michelin Touring Green Guide
for walking tours and asked me which museum I was going to.
“The
Vincent van Gogh Museum,” I answered.
She
asked if she could go with me to the Museum.
She worked at a French foreign investment bank and loved it that I had
studied East Asian Art at the University of Chicago.
The
van Gogh Museum had many paintings from van Gogh’s early period and several
representative ones from his time in Provence and Auvers-sur-Oise in France.
My
favorite van Gogh paintings were those he did showing inspiration from Japanese
painting. Van Gogh used the Japanese
technique of painting at angles to make you feel as if you could walk into the
landscape in the painting or pick flowers off the branches in front of you.
“Landscapes
and flower paintings sell well in urban environments,” I told my investment
banker museum friend.
Van
Gogh received little money and recognition for his work in his lifetime. His brother Theo had to support him
financially.
In
one of his letters to Theo, Vincent wrote that he was happy with his artwork
and that he was his own harshest critic.
However,
van Gogh certainly must have resented handing his cherished artwork over to
café owners to pay for meals. Van Gogh’s
café paintings still turn up in Provence and sell for millions.
I
read a collection of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother entitled Dear Theo
edited by Irving Stone before I visited this museum. I learned from reading this book that it is
good to have a “day job” to create a financial situation for yourself, so you
can create what you want and have freedom of expression.
Most
of the paintings by van Gogh in this Museum use brown and golden tones rather
than the bright yellows, oranges, and blues that were typical of van Gogh’s
work in the South of France. He also
painted farm and family scenes most notably The Potato Eaters.
My
French banker colleague and I drank a beer in a noisy and smoke-filled Dutch
pub. (All of the pubs were noisy and
smoke-filled.) I was going to order fish
in a pub, but said I wanted to eat elsewhere.
We
left the pub and walked along the streets with many kinds of restaurants
located along them. We decided to eat
dinner in a Tibetan Restaurant.
Tibetan
food in its Dutch form seemed to be a heartier form of Mandarin Chinese
food. We ate bao buns with spicy meat
and butter tea. I also ate ribs,
French-style with a knife and fork, to keep my hands clean.
My
banker colleague and I exchanged phone numbers, so I could go to the Chartier
Restaurant in Paris for lunch. (I was
going to lord that over my colleagues at work that I was going to the Parisian
Financiers’ Canteen for lunch. I already
felt like the trip to Amsterdam was a pay dirt success.)
We
went to our different hotels as I wandered through the streets. I went in the general direction of the Okura
Hotel, keeping it in sight.
On
my way, I found the Amstel Beer Factory.
I drank a lot of that as an undergraduate and wanted to take a
photograph for my buddies.
I
was tired when I arrived back at the hotel.
I flipped the security locks on my hotel door and plopped down into bed and
slept peacefully, so I could get up bright and early for a full day of tourism
on the next day in Amsterdam.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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