Van Goghs A Pair of Boots at the Baltimore Museum of Art finds meaning in the ordinary

Vincent van Gogh painted shoes, clogs and old boots as if they were portals to paradise. And why not? A pilgrim who painted, he liked walking; and a pilgrim needs sturdy boots to progress.

Don’t take them for granted, van Gogh seems to have decided. Observe them. Attend to them. Let them be an aid to prayer.

Van Gogh was the son of a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. He had flirted with a religious life, training briefly to be a pastor, even working as a missionary in Belgium. High on the idea of spiritual heroism, he had read — and repeatedly referred to — the Scottish Calvinist author Thomas Carlyle, who argued that what marked the poet, painter or man of genius was the ability to see spiritual loveliness in the most ordinary, workaday objects.

Vincent van Gogh’s “A Pair of Boots” (1887) is on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art. (The Baltimore Museum of Art)

Hence, these beat-up boots, which are on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Van Gogh painted them in 1887, during his final months in Paris, just before his momentous move to the South of France. According to one acquaintance, he would buy pairs of old work shoes at flea markets and walk them through the mud. Only then did he consider them interesting enough to paint.

We are a long way here from the color explosion of Arles and the South, where van Gogh moved in 1888, with tremendous repercussions for his art. But already in this picture, you can feel his palette beginning to brighten. Notice especially the touches of green on the exposed sole (as if stained by grass) and the rich, brushy blue of the cloth on which he carefully arranged the boots, like a priest placing the chalice on the altar.

The stiff laces that corkscrew across the foreground create the sensation that we could reach out and yank them toward us. And the flaps of leather for the upright shoe’s tongue and shaft exude deep character. Most conspicuous of all are the glinting hobnails in the sole of the boot on the left. (A few also protrude, like the teeth of a fox cub, from the tip of the upright boot.)

Hobnails hold a shoe together. They also provide grip. Grip is what we need — all of us — to stop the world sliding out from under our feet. It’s what van Gogh sought with all his heart.

Great Works, In Focus

A series featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works in permanent collections around the United States. “They are things that move me. Part of the fun is trying to figure out why.”

Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at The Washington Post and the author of “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art." He has worked at the Boston Globe, and in London and Sydney for the Daily Telegraph (U.K.), the Guardian, the Spectator, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

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