AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS.- The Van Gogh Museum presents L'Art Nouveau - The Bing empire. This is a major exhibition on the emergence of the French Art Nouveau movement viewed from the perspective of art dealer and collector Siegfried Bing (1838-1905). The name of his Paris gallery, L’Art Nouveau, was adopted to describe the late nineteenth-century art movement, otherwise known as Jugendstil. Bing played a key role as a promoter of Asian art, which was to have an enormous influence on many nineteenth-century artists, including Vincent van Gogh. In fact it was from Bing that he bought the many Japanese prints he owned. More than 400 objects and works of art that passed through Bing’s gallery will be presented, some in period rooms: glassware from Tiffany, paintings and sculptures by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Claudel and Vuillard, furniture, and ceramics and jewellery by Van de Velde, Colonna, De Feure and Gaillard. It is the first exhibition in the Netherlands of this magnitude to focus on the French Art Nouveau.

Van Gogh buys at Bing’s - Vincent van Gogh developed a fascination for Japanese prints while in Paris (1886-88) and bought hundreds of woodcuts from art dealer Siegfried Bing. A selection from Vincent and his brother Theo's collection of around 500 prints, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, is presented in the print room of the exhibition wing parallel to the major Bing exhibition. The presentation also includes works by Van Gogh that were influenced by Japanese examples.