Professor Butter Beard and Russell’s “Portrait of Vincent van Gogh”
“What am in in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” – Vincent van Gogh, in his letter to Theo, July 21, 1882.
We currently live in a world of immediate “selfies.” Through social media, we curate our lives and self-portraits, depicting our journeys from the best possible angle with perfect lighting and showing off that soulful spark and twinkle in our eyes. But what happens when a friend portrays us? A clue as to how we are seen by others. We take a second more critical look to see if they may have captured an unexpected personal reaction, or blemish, or buddha forbid, a stray nose hair! They may have unconsciously revealed one of our perfectly hidden secrets.
Vincent van Gogh understood the reveal of self-portraits. It is as if he painted himself inside out, allowing his soul and its current mood to take center stage. According to Martin Bailey, writing in the current catalogue of Vincent’s self-portraits published by The Courtauld Gallery, only a single portrait photograph of Vincent, aged nineteen, survives, so when we imagine his appearance, we immediately think of his thirty-five self-portraits. But Vincent was also painted by his friends including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin and John Peter Russell.
Three of these eight known works date from his two years in Paris, where he lived with his brother Theo from February 1886 to February 1888. Bailey writes: “On his arrival, Vincent studied for three months at Fernand Cormon’s studio, getting to know many young artists and Theo was the manager of the Boussod & Valadon gallery on Boulevard Montmartre. So together they shared numerous artist friends, many of them from the avant-garde.”
John Peter Russell was born into a wealthy engineering family in 1858 in Sydney, Australia. The family business, P.N. Russell & Co, was responsible for much of the city's 19th-century ironwork. Russell expressed a strong interest in art from an early age, but he met his parents' expectations and trained to become an engineer. His father’s death in December 1879 left him with a sizeable inheritance and gave him the freedom to travel and realize his dream of studying to become an artist. According to his biographers, Russell moved to Paris in 1885 to study under Fernand Cormon, whose small, all-French studio school was considered an unusual choice for international students in Paris, the majority of whom wanted to attend the elite Académie Julian.
During his first year at Cormon's, Russell studied alongside the likes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard and in 1886 they were joined by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who quickly developed a reputation at the school for “his intense and eccentric nature.” Vincent, in a letter to his brother Theo, described his new friend Russell as “a countryman at heart” with “much gravity and strength” and “a certain sweetness of far-off fields.” In November 1886, Vincent agreed to sit for a portrait by Russell.
In the Russell portrait, Vincent turns his head, gazing at us out of the corners of his eyes. He appears smartly dressed, presumably wanting to present himself as a successful artist. He wears a bushy beard and moustache, and his tousled ginger hair is just showing early signs of receding. His face is gaunt, possibly due to the removal of several teeth just a few months earlier. Their mutual friend Archibald Harrick commented when first viewing the work: “When excited, he (Vincent) looked more than a little mad; and this look Russell caught exactly.”
There is also an inscription in red at the top (now barely visible), which reads “Vincent, J.P. Russell, picor. Amitié (painter, Friendship) Paris 1886.” A friend portraying a friend. Seeing him in a different light and perhaps depicting an aspect or two that Vincent himself might be reluctant to share. A possible secret within.
Studying this work over the week inspired me to bake a well-known favorite and update it with a hidden surprise. Vincent and I shared the same carrot-top locks in our youth, and I carried this gift forward re-interpreted as a carrot cake sparkling with warming spices and enhanced with toasted pecans. The unseen bonus prize is an interior bite of creamy coconut cheesecake. When I arrived at a recent gathering with this carrot cake as my offering, a friend immediately commented: “I don’t like cake without frosting.” Take a second look, my friend. The secret’s within.
Carrot Cake Filled With Coconut Cream Cheese
One delicious Bundt
Cake:
3 cups grated carrots
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup dark brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 cup canola oil
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla paste
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cardamom
½ tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 cup toasted and chopped nuts of choice (I prefer pecans for this recipe)
Coconut Cream Cheese Filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
½ tsp fine sea salt
1 egg, room temperature
¼ cup toasted grated coconut (unsweetened)
1) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and spray a bundt pan with “baking spray with flour.”
2) Toast and then coarsely chop the nuts.
3) Grate the carrots and toss with the lemon juice.
4) Sift together the flour, baking soda and spices.
5) In a standing mixer on low with the paddle, mix together everything (except the coconut) for the cream cheese filling until smooth. Then fold in the coconut. Scrape this mixture into a medium bowl and wipe out the mixing bowl.
6) Return the mixing bowl to the standing mixer with the paddle and stir together the two sugars until fully combined. Add the oil and mix until combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla paste until fully incorporated.
7) With the mixer on low, add in the dry mix, about ½ cup at a time, until just combined. Add the carrots and mix just until combined. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the nuts with a spatula.
8) Place half the batter in the bundt pan. With a spoon, create a trench in the batter. Use the same spoon and fill the trench with the cream cheese mixture. Spoon the remaining batter into the pan and bake the cake for roughly one hour until the cake just feels firm. Cool the Bundt on a wire rack for ten minutes before inverting onto a serving plate. Dust the cake with confectionary’s sugar before serving.
Jacobus Marinus Wilhelmus de Louw, “Photograph of Vincent van Gogh aged Nineteen,” 1873, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Detail of John Peter Russell's 1886 portrait of Vincent van Gogh; the original red inscription is highlighted here: Vincent, amitié [French for “friendship”] JP Russell, pictor [Latin for “painter”] Paris, 1886.
