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