One of the most famous paintings in the world has gone back into public view after an extensive restoration. On Friday, Vincent van Gogh’s The Bedroom returned to Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum after being stripped of 80-year-old varnish, among other signs of wear and time. The Bedroom is one of the most familiar images in art (and a familiar image in college dorm walls and on coffee mugs), in part because van Gogh painted three versions. Another hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago and a third in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.
The restored version is far more vibrant in color, which would have been important to the artist, who chose his palette for the particular work carefully. In 1888, he wrote to his brother Theo vividly describing it: “The walls are of a pale violet. The floor is of red tiles. The bedstead and the chairs are fresh butter yellow. … The bedspread scarlet red.”
The project had fans: As restorers worked, the museum kept a blog on their progress, and nearly one-third of the viewers were from America, it reported.
