Almost 135 years after it was painted by Vincent van Gogh, the art work Red Cabbages and Onions has now been rechristened Red Cabbages and Garlic by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Key points
- Dutch chef Ernst de Witte noticed that the foreground of the painting did not depict onions, as believed for more than a century, but garlic bulbs.
- Admitting the error, the museum decided to rename the work.
- Recent years have seen several other works of art being renamed for varied reasons.
- The 1887 work of Vincent van Gogh has the yellow of the garlic (formerly recognised as onions) and red cabbage leaves painted on a grey-blue tablecloth. It is one of the several food still lives painted by the Dutch post-impressionist, and made its public debut in 1928 by German art dealer Paul Cassirer’s gallery in Berlin as Red Cabbages and Onions.
- The practice of titling artworks is estimated to be no more than 300 years old, and is believed to be associated with the proliferation of museums, art galleries and travelling exhibitions, where it would help to offer suggestive interpretations to viewers to contextualise the works for them, not having to rely on oral information.
