Vincent, Theo and the Fox / – Ted Macaluso

Three Views of Van Gogh for Children

Three new picture books give complementary views of the artist’s life.

Authors use the same facts differently. That is as true for picture books as it is for books geared to older ages. When you show children a set of books with different perspectives on the same subject, it helps them develop the capacity to think analytically. Doing this with picture books is a great way for younger kids to have fun while learning how to understand and master their world.

Here are three picture books that, together, help children think about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent Can’t Sleep by Barb Rosenstock and illustrated by Mary GrandPré is a biography of the painter told from the hook of children fighting sleep. It looks at van Gogh as a struggling artist driven to express himself and paint the night sky. Ages 4 to 8.

The Artist and Me by Shane Peacock and illustrated by Sophie Casson uses van Gogh’s time in Arles, France to teach about bullying. It looks at van Gogh as a visionary, bullied for being both poor and different. The story is told by one of the bullies as an adult looking back at what he did and what he learned. Ages 5 to 9.

Vincent, Theo and the Fox by Ted Macaluso (yes, that’s me) uses van Gogh’s life to teach about growing up and brotherhood. It looks at van Gogh, and his brother Theo, as two young boys who wonder what they should be when they grow up. Chasing a mischievous fox through van Gogh’s paintings they discover the answer to how to be the best you can be when you grow up. Ages 4 to 10.

One artist and three viewpoints. All three perspectives are true, which is the beauty of reading these three books together.

All three books have great reviews.

Kirkus Reviews called Vincent Can’t Sleep “a soft, sad, lovely introduction to a masterpiece.” Booklist said it is “a beautiful exploration of van Gogh’s influences and achievement.”

The School Library Journal’s assessment of The Artist and Me is that the book presents “…a troubling issue observed through the lens of art history [and] delivers a meaningful message about individuality and tolerance.”

Kirkus Reviews called Vincent, Theo and the Fox “a charming, unique way to introduce youngsters to great art while providing an important message.” ThePictureBookReview.com said: “[Vincent, Theo and the Fox] is the first book I’ve read where the illustrations are storied instead of the story being illustrated….It adds a depth of imagination that I’m not used to in picture books. I can’t think of any other picture book doing this–it’s wonderful!”

Reading all three books can be a powerful experience. Together, they reinforce the reality that Vincent van Gogh was, like each and every one of us is, a complex, many-sided person.

Ted Macaluso lives in Reston, Virginia and blogs about children’s books and art at www.tedmacaluso.com.

Note: Some of the links above are “affiliate links” to Amazon.com, which means that Amazon pays me a few pennies if you end up buying the book through the link here. Your price is the same whether you use the affiliate link or find the book another way. The pennies don’t influence my judgment. These are all books I’ve read and recommend. You’re free to click, look on Amazon, and not buy.

An Interview With Ted

…plus information about writing that goes back to ancient Greece: Ekphrasis.

Possibly the oldest form of writing about art is known as ekphrasis. I am excited and pleased that The Ekphrastic Review published an interview with me about my book, Vincent, Theo and the Fox, which is inspired by the paintings of Vincent van Gogh.

You can read the interview here.

Carol Scheina, the interviewer, is a marvelous writer. You can find links to her imaginative and delightful stories here.

If you want to find excellent ekphrastic poems and stories (as well as podcasts and writing challenges), consider subscribing to The Ekphrastic Review.

For people interested in the craft of writing, you can’t go wrong reading The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction by Janée J. Baugher.

Professor Marjorie Munsterberg created a website, Writing About Art, for her course of the same name at The City College of New York. You can read what she writes about ekphrasis here.

I’m sure your favorite search engine will reveal more. But first, if you haven’t already done so, please read the interview (it is about me, after all).

Thanks.

Ted

Three Views of Van Gogh for Children

Three new picture books give complementary views of the artist’s life.

Here are three picture books that, together, help children think about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh.

One artist and three viewpoints. All three perspectives are true, which is the beauty of reading these three books together.

All three books have great reviews.

Reading all three books can be a powerful experience. Together, they reinforce the reality that Vincent van Gogh was, like each and every one of us is, a complex, many-sided person.

Ted Macaluso lives in Reston, Virginia and blogs about children’s books and art at www.tedmacaluso.com.

Now out in hardback.

Available online now. Coming to bookstores in May.

Vincent van Gogh’s Peasant Women

Van Gogh painted dozens of portraits of peasant women. What do we know about them? And, why was this one used in a children’s book?

This portrait by Vincent van Gogh, Head of a Peasant Woman with a White Cap (Nuenen, 1885), is dramatic: for the lighting, the woman’s chiseled features, and the intense concentration and intelligence in her eyes. The image marks an equally dramatic turn in Vincent, Theo and the Fox, my children’s book story about van Gogh and growing up:

“On silent, padded paws the fox jumped to the kitchen counter, where there was a basket of potatoes. He took one and ate it….With a clang and a clatter, the potatoes spilled everywhere. One of the women looked over and saw the fox. She nudged her husband. “I shall catch that fox,” her husband said. “We shall eat him for supper. Later, I will make you a fur coat…”

I won’t reveal what happens next. Authors have to live, so please buy the book here to find out. However, I do want to talk about van Gogh’s portraits of peasant women. Here are four more examples of the many portraits of women created by van Gogh:

head-of-an-old-peasant-woman-with-white-cap-1884-1large head-of-a-peasant-woman-with-white-cap-18841

head-of-a-peasant-woman-with-white-cap-1885-6large head-of-a-woman-71large

(These examples are from WikiArt.org- encyclopedia of visual arts, where you can find many more similar portraits.)

Van Gogh did not just paint peasant women, of course. Between 1881 and 1885 he made many paintings of women, men and couples. These paintings include both portraits and studies of working people engaged in everyday chores: sowing and sewing, fishing and weaving, farming and cooking.

Why did van Gogh make these and his other peasant character studies? First, he was aware of the industrialization creeping across the Netherlands. Vincent saw the changing landscape and its increasingly harsh impact on the working poor, who had little chance to change occupations. Second, as an artist, he admired another painter, Jean-François Millet, a pioneer of the “peasant genre” in the realism movement in art.

For a full explanation we also have to recognize that the life of peasants and the cycles of nature are closely related. The significance of that point becomes clear when we look at van Gogh’s own moral compass: he started out ministering to coal miners and trying to serve their needs. His life and work were dominated by intense spiritual needs even after he had renounced formalized religion. As Ann H. Murray, retired Assistant Professor of Art and Director of the Watson Gallery at Wheaton College, points out, Van Gogh painted landscapes and images of “simple people who lived in harmony with nature” because “he had turned to nature as his sole source of spiritual fulfillment and admittedly tried to express such feelings in his art.”

Back to the story. Why did I select the first portrait above to use in Vincent, Theo and the Fox? She’s looking to the right, first of all. In the story, the fox starts the scene by observing the people in van Gogh’s famous painting, The Potato Eaters, at their table. In my mind’s eye, van Gogh’s Basket of Potatoes was on a counter to the right.
So the woman had to be looking in that direction. More importantly, the woman’s expression is neither contemplative nor beaten-down. She is focused on something see sees and she is reacting intently to it. Perfect for a story character seeing a fox trying to eat her poor family’s scarce potatoes.

It is stimulating and fun to weave stories around fine art. I believe anyone can do it if they try. The trick is to make sure that the choice in art (of which there are many) matches the arc of the story (where the possibilities are almost infinite but under your control). How do you think I did with this one match-up? Leave a comment, below. I’ll be sure to read it.

– Ted Macaluso

51yxdllnnwl-_sx416_bo1204203200_ For more reflections about van Gogh and religion, see my earlier essay, The Church at Auvers.

If you are interested in learning more about van Gogh and nature, check out the Clark Art Institute’s Van Gogh and Nature, written by Richard Kendall, Sjraar van Heighten, and Chris Stolwijk [affiliate link].

If you liked this post and want to make sure you learn when future ones are posted, please subscribe to my newsletter by clicking here. Every other week you’ll receive news about blog posts on art, children’s books and writing; information about new books; and an occasional subscriber-only giveaway.

Ted Macaluso writes books for kids that make art more fun. His book, Vincent, Theo and the Fox, is a fictional adventure about the young Vincent van Gogh that teaches about growing up and learning from failure (for ages 4 – 10). He lives in Reston, Virginia with his wife, son, and kind hearted dog. Find out more at tedmacaluso.com.

The Harvest and The Story

Vincent van Gogh’s The Harvest at La Crau is the painting that inspired Vincent, Theo and the Fox. Here we learn more about the painting and how it led to a children’s tale about growing up.

During the time he lived in Provence, van Gogh braved the heat of the day and went out numerous times to paint the glorious countryside. He completed The Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background in June of 1888.

If ever a painting captured the beauty of a summer day in the country, this one is it. The color scheme is particularly appropriate, with a blue sky, blue carts, and blue sides of barns encircled by the orange of the foreground, the wheat stack and the roofs of houses. These elements highlight the almost luminescent gold of the wheat that dominates the image. The brilliant red wagon wheels in the middle right of the picture draw the eye on a line leading back to the white Abbey of Montmajour in the far background of the upper left. Van Gogh was fascinated with the Abbey, visiting it at least 50 times.

Wheat fields are a subject for many of van Gogh’s paintings and can be seen as metaphors for humanity’s cycles of life. Which brings us to children and growing up. How did this painting inspire Vincent, Theo and the Fox? Here is the story behind the story.

To get my son to go on exercise walks with me I would tell him stories. They were simple action tales: Suddenly, a monster…Bam, a hero…Wham another monster. And then one day a real monster struck: Mark had a series of lung infections and several times a day had to sit still for twenty minutes breathing through a nebulizer. Not what an active 5 year old boy wants to do! Just before one of these episodes his grandmother was visiting and we had all gone to the National Gallery of Art to see an exhibit of van Gogh’s paintings. She bought the exhibit catalog, Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam by Richard Kendall with contributions by John Leighton and Sjraar van Heugten. One afternoon when Mark was being nebulized, he asked me to tell a story. I did not have it in me. He pointed to the catalog saying, “Read me the story.” I tried to explain, “It’s not a story.” Neither he nor Grandma would let me off easy. I had to “read” the catalog to him.

What to do? An art catalog is not a wham, bam action tale. I opened it at random and it showed The Harvest at La Crau. I thought to myself, “OK, Vincent has to be a boy to make this interesting…but what is he doing?” I surprised myself by saying, “One day, when he was a boy, Vincent van Gogh and his brother, Theo, were looking at the harvest when they saw a fox sneak into the cart.” That picture and that idea became the start of Vincent, Theo and the Fox. Vincent and Theo chased the fox through a bunch of van Gogh’s paintings until the nebulizer was done. At that point, the fox got away and the boys went home.

The tale kept Mark engaged but it was not really a story yet. I knew it needed more. I asked myself, “What do boys do?” The answer, of course, is that they grow up. And while they grow up they wonder what they will become. We all know that van Gogh became a painter, but he didn’t go there directly, trying a number of different jobs first. So as a boy in a story there is wonder and mystery when Vincent thinks about growing up. I came up with the idea that the fox was young too—he was also trying to grow up and find his way in the world. And that, I believe, is what makes Vincent, Theo and the Fox a delightful tale. We have two boys and a fox thinking about growing up and through their actions teaching each other about life. The writer, Susan Sontag, writes that “art is not only about something, it is something.” By this, she means that art isn’t like science or history, it doesn’t teach you facts you should know. Rather, literature gives readers an experience from which they learn and take their own lessons. I like to think that Vincent, Theo and the Fox achieves this: it does not teach about growing up, it lets readers learn about it.

Because the art is beautiful and chase tales are exciting, young readers don’t “get” what they are experiencing until it is over. But my hope is that the story stays with children and they learn while they process the experience of the story. Because the book gives a biography of van Gogh in an epilogue, children learn about van Gogh while processing the experience of the story. I think this really engages them in van Gogh’s art and gives the story more depth.

What do you think about the story? What do your children get from it? If you want to leave comments I will read them with interest.

Thanks, Ted Macaluso

Ted Macaluso writes books for kids that make art more fun. His book, Vincent, Theo and the Fox, is a fictional adventure about the young Vincent van Gogh that teaches about growing up and learning from failure (for ages 4 – 10). He lives in Reston, Virginia with his wife, son, and kind hearted dog. Find out more at tedmacaluso.com.

If you liked this post and want to make sure you learn when future ones are posted, please subscribe to my newsletter by clicking here. Every other week you’ll receive news about blog posts on art, children’s books and writing; information about new books; and an occasional subscriber-only giveaway.

Vincent van Gogh, Easel Paintings and a bit of Michael Jackson

Near the end of Vincent, Theo and the Fox, the young Vincent van Gogh thinks about what he might become when he grows up. When he thinks about becoming a painter, he thinks about easels. It turns out that lots of artists use easels in their self-portraits. What do these paintings mean?

“And [Vincent] thought about what it would mean to be a painter. He thought about standing at an easel in a studio. Then he thought about carrying an easel and paint to capture the landscapes he and Theo had seen.”

Vincent, Theo and the Fox is a story about Vincent van Gogh and growing up (for ages 4-10). It is illustrated with 30 of van Gogh’s paintings (including the two above). Some readers want to know more about the paintings so, on Mondays, I blog about one or more of them.

One of Vincent van Gogh’s more famous self-portraits (above left) is from 1888 and shows him standing at an easel. Paul Cezanne adopted a very similar pose in an 1885 self-portrait, as did Camille Corot in 1825, Peder Severin Kroyer in 1902 and Marc Chagall in 1914.

self-portrait-sitting-next-to-an-easel-1825large

self-portrait-sitting-by-his-easel-at-skagen-beach-1902large

Some artists get quite imaginative with their easel-involved self portraits. As far back as 1605, Annibale Carracci painted his self portrait as if it were an unfinished painting propped on an easel (perhaps, as art critic Laura Cumming points out, to symbolize that he is like all men a work in progress). More recently, Norman Rockwell gave the genre a wonderful twist with his Triple Self-Portrait (which emphasizes the importance of the mirror to self-portraiture).

950px-self-portrait_on_an_easel_in_a_workshop_by_annibale_carracci

But why include an easel in a self-portrait? Is it the same as a stonemason, say, posing with a mallet and chisel (or the picture of me posing with a laptop above my bio)? Tools of the trade are important and there can be an aspect of advertising involved in artist self-portraits. A self-portrait shows the skill of an artist. A potential patron can compare the artist to her self-portrait and decide whether or not to commission a work. But there is, I think, more significance than that in both the idea of easels and self-portraits themselves.

The history of easel paintings is interesting. The website essentialvermeer.com gives some insight. The word “easel” comes from the Dutch word, ezel, meaning donkey. Around 1600, the word started to be used in its secondary sense of a stand used to support paintings. Easels, as stands, have probably been around since the ancient Egyptians. But, until the 13th century, paintings tended to be large: murals and wall-paintings. After the 13th century, there was growing public interest in acquiring art. Meeting that desire required smaller paintings, namely ones that could be done on an easel. Ever since, easel paintings have become the typical form of modern painting. Being highly transportable, easel paintings were easy to buy and sell, easel painting facilitated the growth of the art market.

Basically, easel paintings are an embodiment of a mind switch in the art world. Painting became secular. Fine art was no longer just for chapels and castle walls. Easel paintings were objects of worth in their own right. Also, an easel, with its freedom from a fixed location, makes a subtle assertion of the independence of the art of painting and the profession of painter.

But, with or without easels, self-portraits are often gripping to see. They are the artist’s answer to the eternal question, “Who am I?” The author of A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits, Laura Cumming, points out:

“Self-portraits make artists present as the embodiment of their art; it sounds so neat and succinct. But they often do so only to ask who or what this person is who is looking back from the mirror, how dismaying it is to be alone, how hard it is to represent or even just to be oneself.

Van Gogh had the courage to look in the mirror numerous times, painting 41 self portraits. Vincent–and all the other artists who have done serial self-portraits–make me think of Michael Jackson’s wonderful hit, “Man in the Mirror.” Here is a YouTube tribute by the person who wrote the song for (and performed it with) Jackson, Siedah Garrett.

– Ted Macaluso

Ted Macaluso writes books for kids that make art more fun. Born in Brooklyn, he was a successful researcher on child nutrition and hunger before turning full-time to writing. His book, Vincent, Theo and the Fox, is a fictional adventure about the young Vincent van Gogh that teaches about growing up and learning from failure (for ages 4 – 10). He now lives in Reston, Virginia with his wife, son, and kind hearted dog. Find out more at tedmacaluso.com.

The Yellow House: Sunflowers and a Sword

In Vincent, Theo and the Fox, the first place the fox visits on his adventure is Vincent van Gogh’s yellow house in Arles. In art history, this house was where van Gogh created some of his greatest paintings and experienced some of his worst tragedies. Today, we look deeper into this incredible painting.

The fox ran to a village. He saw a yellow house and a restaurant. Boy was he hungry. The fox was young. That morning, he had left home determined to learn his way in the world. “I shall be like a human and eat in that restaurant,” he thought.

Vincent, Theo and the Fox is a story about Vincent van Gogh and growing up (for ages 4-10). It is illustrated with 30 of van Gogh’s paintings. Some readers want to know more about the paintings so, on Mondays, I blog about one or more of them.

When Van Gogh moved to Arles, he lived in temporary lodgings before finding the yellow house in May 1888. The house was two blocks from the Rhone river. There was a small grocery store next to the house (in the painting, the building to the left, with banner and awning). Vincent frequently ate at the pink-hued restaurant to the right. In a letter to his sister, van Gogh described the building as “painted in yellow colour of fresh butter on the outside…it stands in the full sunlight in a square which has a green garden…it is completely whitewashed inside, and the floor is made of red bricks. And over it there is the intensively blue sky. In this I can live and breath, meditate and paint.”

He rented four rooms. On the ground floor, he made two large rooms into his atelier (studio) and a kitchen. Upstairs, on the left was Vincent’s famous bedroom (in the painting above, the one with one green shutter open). The other room, with both shutters open in the painting, was a guest room.

The guest room was important to Vincent. He hoped to attract other artists to Arles and start an artists’ colony, a “studio of the south” as he termed it. He wanted painter Paul Gauguin to be the head of the colony. As Michael Prodger points out, the two artists made a very odd pair. Theo van Gogh brought the two men together. Theo was Gauguin’s art dealer and Vincent’s sole source of support; he thought it would be good for Gauguin to keep an eye on Vincent. Gauguin wanted to keep Theo as his dealer and wanted to save money on rent so that he could leave for Tahiti earlier.

work_25 At first, Vincent was excited that Gauguin was going to join him in Arles. He proceeded to decorate the house, buying used furniture and making paintings for the dwelling, including four of his sunflower paintings. Today, with sunflowers such as the one on the left, used on greeting cards, it is hard to appreciate how beautiful, new and intense they were.

Unfortunately, the two men had contrasting personalities. After nine weeks they fought and, in the fight, van Gogh lost his ear. The popular story is that van Gogh cut off his own ear with a razor. However, in a 2009 study, two German art historians argue that Gauguin cut off the ear with a sword he always carried. The two men “kept a “pact of silence” – Gauguin to avoid prosecution and Van Gogh in a vain attempt to keep a friend with whom he was hopelessly infatuated.” The truth, of course, is buried in the past. Personally, given Gauguin’s narcissism, meanness, and treatment of underage women in Tahiti; I prefer to believe the account of the German scholars.

Two books about the time van Gogh and Gauguin were together may be of interest. For adults there is The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence by Martin Gayford.

512tkmkpg3l-_sx357_bo1204203200_ For children, Susan Goldman Rubin (author) and Jos. A. Smith (illustrator) wrote a picture book called The Yellow House: Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin Side by Side. It was published in connection with the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibit Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South. It is no longer in print. To find it you will have to go to the library or buy it used.

The real yellow house was bombed during World War II and no longer exists (although there is a placard there). The painting never left the artist’s estate and is on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

– Ted Macaluso

Ted Macaluso writes books for kids that make art more fun. Born in Brooklyn, he was a successful researcher on child nutrition and hunger before turning full-time to writing. His book, Vincent, Theo and the Fox, is a fictional adventure about the young Vincent van Gogh that teaches about growing up and learning from failure (for ages 4 – 10). He now lives in Reston, Virginia with his wife, son, and kind hearted dog. Find out more at tedmacaluso.com.

Van Gogh, a Stagecoach to the Sea, and a Gypsy Caravan

In the summer of 1888, Vincent van Gogh took a stagecoach trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a tiny fishing village on the Mediterranean Sea. Inspired by the views and an encounter with gypsies, three of the paintings in Vincent, Theo and the Fox come from that one-week visit.

Vincent, Theo and the Fox, is a story about Vincent van Gogh and growing up (for ages 4-10). It is illustrated with 30 of van Gogh’s paintings. Some readers want to know more about the paintings, so, on Mondays, I blog about them. Today, there are three to discuss.

“At first, the fox loved the rocking of his boat and the snap of wind in the sails…”

During the time van Gogh was living in Arles, he made a trip to Saintes-Maries, to recuperate from health-problems and to make some seaside paintings. In May or June of 1888, when he made the trip, the village had less than 100 houses. According to Lucina Ward, International Art Curator for the National Gallery of Australia, the area “was still a sterile salty plain of lagoons and marshes, populated by flamingos, wild bulls and white horses.” Van Gogh was fascinated with the changing colors of the water. He wrote that the “Mediterranean Sea is a mackerel color: in other words, changeable – you do not always know whether it is green or purple, you do not always know if it is blue, as the next moment the ever-changing sheen has assumed a pink or a gray tint” (quote found in Saintes-Maries (Van Gogh series).

The painting above, Seascape at Saintes-Maries, and the one below, Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Marie, illustrate an early part of the story of Vincent, Theo and the Fox. As young boys, Vincent and his brother, Theo, are chasing a fox to save the creature from a farmer. Before they can catch him, the quick-witted animal manages to steal a boat. Like Vincent and Theo, the fox is young and trying to learn his way in the world. At first, the furry creature thinks he might become a sailor. But it doesn’t take long for the fox to realize he does not belong at sea. The paintings illustrate this part of the story.

“When the boat drifted to shore the fox jumped out and started running.”

The village of Saintes-Maries is named after the three Marys of the Bible (Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome, and Mary Jacobe). It was (and still is) significant to the Romany gypsies of Europe. Each year they make a pilgrimage to the village to honor Saint Sarah (sometimes known as Black Sara). Believed to be the Egyptian servant of the three Marys, she is their patron saint. Van Gogh encountered the gypsies there. Later, after returning to Arles, he made today’s third painting (below), Encampment of Gypsies with Caravans.

This painting comes near the end of the story. Vincent and Theo see the fox find happiness only after he tried–and failed at–different occupations. Young Vincent starts to think about what he will be when he grows up and what he will try as he grows. The range of “respectable” choices is overwhelming and, mentally, Vincent needs a break–a break only fantasies of gypsies can supply.

“For a short time Vincent even thought about running away to join a gypsy camp.”

We don’t know how much van Gogh interacted with any of the gypsies during his sojourn to Saintes-Maries but he was undoubtedly drawn to their romantic lifestyle. Like him, they were socially ostracized. To quote Lucina Ward once more, in the gypsy caravan:

“the frieze of figures, vehicles and horses…seems designed to emphasise the flatness of the landscape. Only the tree at right and the scrubby vegetation at left offer refuge from the sun. The empty foreground adds to the feeling of harsh desolation, a suggestion, perhaps, of the peripheral position of gypsy people. The intensity of the light suggests the glorious palette of works to come…”

Three wonderful paintings and more to come as we explore van Gogh’s world. Stay tuned!

– Ted Macaluso

Ted Macaluso writes books for kids that make art more fun. Born in Brooklyn, he was a successful researcher on child nutrition and hunger before turning full-time to writing. His book, Vincent, Theo and the Fox, is a fictional adventure about the young Vincent van Gogh that teaches about growing up and learning from failure (for ages 4 – 10) . He now lives in Reston, Virginia with his wife, son, and kind hearted dog. Find out more at tedmacaluso.com.

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