Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

with the tributes he has paid you. Thank you, too, for the generous words you have just spoken. The distinguished guest who is going to open this exhibition is Mr Ronald de Leeuw. Let me say at once that, as Director of the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam, he is one of the most significant and influential Gallery Directors in the world. It is especially pleasing to welcome him here this evening because, without his personal response to the request to borrow works from his Collection, it would not have been possible to mount this exhibition. When James Mollison from the NGV and Robert Edwards from AEA visited him in 1992, his agreement was immediate and positive and, as a result, six outstanding paintings, five by Van Gogh himself, have come from his museum.' As you will be aware from its tide, this exhibition is not about Van Gogh alone. It attempts to reveal those artists who served as his artistic source, to reveal Van Gogh's own genius, and to show the influence that he had on the generation of artists that followed him. In other words, it is an exhibition of sowers and reapers. This is very much in line with the thinking of Ronald de Leeuw. When he was appointed Director of the Van Gogh Museum in 1986, he said that his aim was to display the Museum's collections in a way that would give viewers a fuller understanding of the artist, his times and his contemporaries-in short, to draw Van Gogh out of his isolation. In 1990, to mark the centenary of the artist's death, he organised an exhibition, 'Van Gogh and Modern Art 1890-1914', which linked, for the first time, the paintings of Van Gogh with those of a younger generation of European artists and illustrated his influence on the development of modern art. In the catalogue to that exhibition, he wrote: Van Gogh, himself, was not optimistic about the direction that modern art was taking during his life time. He regarded it as a serious decline, a decadence in comparison with the achievements of Delacroix and Millet. Nevertheless, he was convinced that he, himself, had a contribution to make to art. We will be looking at that contribution in this exhibition. Ronald de Leeuw is a distinguished art historian as well as an art museum director. He studied in the United States and completed his doctorate at the State University of Leiden. He has written widely on the subject of nineteenth-century paintings. He is the recipient of several international awards, including Commander of the Order of Merit of Italy and Portugal and Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland. What he is going to tell us about Van Gogh himself and about the exhibition in general will certainly be fascinating and I therefore have great pleasure in asking him to address us. 21 Speech at the dinner following the opening of 'Shell presents Van Gogh: His Sources, Genius and Influence', 21 January 1994 Thank you, Mr Justice Lockhart, for your kind and generous words about the Queensland Art Gallery and about our working relationship with your own organisation--Art Exhibitions Australia Limited. 88