Did Vincent van Gogh predict the future with La Mousmé?  

Vincent and his buddies (Whistler, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Manet) all had serious boners for all things Japanese. If you want to be classy it’s called Japonisme. It’s the only flattering form of an Asian fetish!

Mousmé is Japanese for a young girl around the ages of 12-14, stupidly known as a “tween.” This painting is based off of a character in Pierre Loti’s novel Madame Chrysanthéme (1887). It’s about a white navy guy wifing a geisha while he’s stationed in Japan. Sounds like a lot of marriages that happened about 60 years later during World War II! The operas by André Messager (Madame Chrysanthéme, 1893) and Puccini (Madame Butterfly, 1904) are based off of this novel.

The mystery girl is holding a branch of oleander buds in her hand and is all about the mystery of the cycle of life and death. A creepy coincidence I just learned is that oleander is the official flower of Hiroshima as it was the first plant to bloom after the atomic bombing in 1945. Did van Gogh have some sort of scary premonition?

Some people speculate that the girl in the painting is Adeline Ravoux, a model he used several times. But, I will have to disagree. I don’t really see the resemblance between the two girls. Additionally, Vincent’s letters to his brother say that this was painted while he lived in the yellow house in Arles. Adeline lived in Auvers where van Gogh ultimately killed himself (or was killed). A seven and a half hour car ride away. Did homegirl just come up for the weekend?

Chester Dale made his fortune on Wall Street and with the help of his wife Maud Murray, who was a painter and art critic, amassed a huge art collection including this painting. Part of over 300 works that he donated to the National Gallery of Art during his lifetime and posthumously in addition to the endowment he set up for fellowships. What a generous guy!