How LACMA Got a van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh, Tarascon Stagecoach, 1888. LACMA, gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation

The Art Institute of Chicago has nine van Gogh paintings. Until recently, LACMA had zero. The prospect of getting one seemed meagre, given staggering auction prices and egotistical billionaires who prefer to start their own museums rather than support public ones. Yet this August the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation gave LACMA a major Arles-period van Gogh, Tarascon Stagecoach. It has just gone on view in the exhibition "Collecting Impressionism at LACMA." How did Los Angeles luck out?

Installation view of "Collecting Impressionism at LACMA" with Tarascon Stagecoach

Actor Edward G. Robinson and wife Gladys pose with van Gogh's Portrait of Pére Tanguy (1887) in a 1949 beer ad. A few years later the couple divorced, selling their art collection

Van Gogh was popular with West Coast collectors. Hollywood stars Edward G. Robinson, Errol Flynn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Barbra Streisand each owned van Gogh paintings. Industrialist Norton Simon bought six van Goghs, and oilman Armand Hammer had four. 

When LACMA opened as a separate, art-focused museum in 1965, much of the Simon collection was on loan. It was easy to read that as a sign that Simon's collection would eventually go to LACMA. But Simon never made any promises. 

Armand Hammer did, pledging his collection to LACMA. There was even hope—nothing more than that—that Palm Springs resident Walter Annenberg's collection (five van Goghs) or part of it might come to LACMA. 

It didn't happen. Instead we have a Simon Museum in Pasadena and a Hammer Museum in Westwood. The Annenberg collection went to New York, and the movie stars' van Goghs were dispersed in divorces and financial reverses. 

George Gard DeSylva. Photo: Bob Landry

It was a Hollywood hyphenate who established LACMA as a center for Impressionism. George Gard ("Buddy") DeSylva was a child vaudevillian-turned-songwriter, movie producer, and cofounder of Capitol Records. He assembled a serious collection featuring Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. There was an important van Gogh painting, Chestnut Trees in Flower: Pink and White Blossoms, and two Arles-period drawings. 

van Gogh, Chestnut Trees in Flower: Pink and White Blossoms, 1890. Private collection, formerly collection of George Gard DeSylva

DeSylva and wife gave much of that collection to the Los Angeles County Museum, then in Exposition Park, in 1946. In 1949 they threw in the two van Gogh drawings—the museum's first works by the artist—though not the painting. DeSylva died of heart trouble the next year, at the age of 55.

van Gogh, The Postman Joseph Roulin, 1888. LACMA

One of the DeSylva drawings is a large (over 16 by 20-in.) ink portrait of Vincent's postman bro, Joseph Roulin. It records the composition of the famous painting in Boston. 

Tarascon Stagecoach had no prior connection to Los Angeles. It's an unusual subject: Americans associate stagecoaches with the Old West, not the south of France. Van Gogh took the idea from Alphonse Daudet's 1872 novel, Tartarin de Tarascon, a boisterous satire in the spirit of Don Quixote. One section is narrated by a stagecoach, recounting its existence from a working conveyance in Tarascon, France, to being torn up for firewood in North Africa. 

Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo, Oct. 13, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Tarascon also figures in one of van Gogh's best-known quotes. In a letter to brother Theo, Vincent describes and sketches Tarascon Stagecoach:

"Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star…"

van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888. Munich Pinakothek

Tarascon Stagecoach is one of the group of paintings that van Gogh intended for his Yellow House, the studio space he hoped to share with Paul Gauguin. The humble home was to be a pantheon of what we now regard as masterpieces: The Yellow House, Bedroom in Arles, Night Cafe, Starry Night Over the Rhône, L'Arlésienne, La Berceuse, and  two versions of Sunflowers. These paintings conform to the commercial size 30 canvas that van Gogh favored,  36-7/16 by 28-1/8 in. in the case of Tarascon Stagecoach.

In the letter to Theo, Vincent mentions the "very simple" background of "pink and yellow walls" in Tarascon Stagecoach. Today the walls look white and ochre. Van Gogh's pinks have often faded to white due to the inexpensive chemical pigments he used. Seeing Tarascon Stagecoach for the first time, I *think* I was able to discern a blush of pink in the upper part of the building at top left. 

Detail of Tarascon Stagecoach

The painting's most daring feature is the brushy blue-white foreground. Half of a van Gogh painting is a Robert Ryman! The artist must have been thinking of Japanese prints. The stagecoach's lilac shadow foregrounds whiter-than-white wheels with black-and-ochre spokes. 

Thanks to the letter, Tarascon Stagecoach's existence has long been known. Its whereabouts were a mystery to the north-of-the-equator art world, though. 

Medardo Rosso, Self-Portrait in the Studio, after 1901

The painting had been owned by Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), the proto-Modern Italian sculptor. Rosso hung Tarascon Stagecoach in his Paris studio. The reaction was so negative, even in Rosso's avant-garde circle, that he consigned it to the attic. One of the few friends who liked Tarascon Stagecoach was Uruguayan painter Milo Beretta (1875–1935). Rosso gave him the van Gogh when Beretta moved back to his homeland in 1895. It became the first known van Gogh in the Americas.

In 1906 Rosso wrote Beretta to make sure he knew that van Goghs had gone way up in value. He said the painting might be worth (Dr. Evil pinkie…) $4000. 

A 1935 exhibition in Montevideo drew attention to Tarascon Stagecoach as a locally held and valuable painting. In 1941 the Museum of Modern Art traded two Cézannes and a Toulouse-Lautrec for Starry Night. Though no dollar value was set, it demonstrated van Gogh's ascendance to the top of the Post-Impressionist market. The spiraling valuations ramped up anxiety for Beretta's six daughters. They placed the painting in a Montevideo bank vault for safekeeping. Eventually they decided to sell it to South American dealer Paul de Koenigsberg. 

One of De Koenigsberg's clients was Henry Pearlman, a Brooklyn-born Jewish businessman who had made a modest fortune in marine refrigeration—keeping fish and other perishables fresh at sea. As a collector he was self-taught and not nearly as wealthy as some of his contemporaries. De Koenigsberg asked Pearlman whether he might be interested in an expensive painting. Pearlman said yes and, upon seeing the van Gogh, concluded a deal in an hour and a half. 

Pearlman agreed to swap a Chaim Soutine, two Renoirs, four lesser paintings, plus some cash for the van Gogh. He immediately regretted giving up the Soutine and bought it back the next day. But he kept the van Gogh, the prize of his collection.

Henry Pearlman in his office. The Manet Young Woman in a Round Hat (right) has been promised to LACMA

Henry seems not to have had a clear vision for the future of his art holdings. After his 1974 death, his wife Rose decided to put the couple's collection on loan to Princeton's University Art Museum. Neither Henry nor Rose had attended Princeton. 

Norton Simon might have played an indirect role in the loan. In 1972 Simon announced that he was putting his art collection on a year-long loan to Princeton University Art Gallery. He hinted that the loan might become permanent. But Simon disappointed Princeton much as he had LACMA. In 1974 he negotiated a deal to take over the financially troubled Pasadena Museum and move his collection west. With empty galleries to fill, Princeton might have been especially receptive to Rose's offer, even if it too was only a loan.

The Pearlman collection ended up being on view at Princeton for half a century. After Rose died in 1994, the Pearlman Foundation passed to the couple's descendants. They approved frequent loans to museums on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Daniel Edelman, Henry and Rose's grandson and the Foundation's president, spoke to museum directors nationwide about finding a permanent home for the collection. Michael Govan's pitch for LACMA must have started with the museum's extraordinary need. LACMA, the flagship museum of America's second largest city, had no van Gogh painting. 

Ultimately the Pearlman Foundation elected to distribute its entire collection to three institutions. The Museum of Modern Art got the Cézanne paintings and watercolors; the Brooklyn Museum got the largest number of works, including the Modiglianis and Soutines; and LACMA got just five works. Yet the LACMA gift is the most consequential for its recipient. Besides a long-sought van Gogh, it got a Manet (its first), a Sisley (its second), a Toulouse-Lautrec (its second and related to its first, donated by the DeSylvas), and a sculpture by Wilhelm Lembruck (its first). 

van Gogh, Orchard Bordered by Cypresses, 1888. Ex Paul Allen collection, auctioned by Sotheby's in 2022

In 2022 the estate of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen auctioned a middling van Gogh landscape for a record $115 million, more than any museum in the world would likely be willing or able to pay. The price testifies to the short supply of museum-worthy van Gogh paintings. It's one of the first Arles paintings and not at the level of those the artist would be making a few months later, such as Tarascon Stagecoach.

So how did LACMA get its van Gogh? As Henry Pearlman wrote, "Luck plays a large part in building up a collection." If Medaro's circle hadn't hated Tarascon Stagecoach… if Medaro hadn't given it to an artist bound for the art market's antipodes… if Pearlman hadn't accepted de Koenigsberg's offer immediately… if Pearlman hadn't neglected to name a permanent home for collection (which surely would have been on the East Coast)… Tarascon Stagecoach probably would have ended up somewhere else. 

Henry Pearlman's office with Tarascon Stagecoach and works by Modigliani, Cézanne, and Renoir