Alexander Reid: Vincent van Gogh’s Scottish Double?

Natascha Watt

I never thought I would find myself reading through the notes I made on the Scottish Colourists for a research project I undertook at school, but there I was using them as a starting point for this article in which I discuss their shared art dealer Alexander Reid. They were of course Samuel Peploe, John Fergusson, Francis Cadell and George Hunter.

Alexander Reid was raised in Glasgow, the city in which he was born in 1854. He initially went into his family’s cabinet making business after leaving school at sixteen. However, it was only when, because of its success, the business expanded into interior furnishings that he discovered his true passion: dealing in works of art.

Vincent van Gogh, View from Theo’s Apartment, 1887, Oil on Canvas, 45.9 x 38.1 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Image courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum

 In 1886 he moved to Paris to pursue a career in art. There, he attended art classes, but quickly abandoned them, having obtained a position at the Boussod, Valadon & Cie auction house, initially as first assistant and later as branch manager. This was the successor of Goupil & Cie where Vincent van Gogh had previously worked for a short period. It was there that Reid met fellow art dealer Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother. Reid quickly struck up a friendship with them both, and they all shared an apartment together at 54 Rue Lepic in the eighteenth arrondissement for six months.

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Oil on Cotton, 44.5 x 37.2 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Image courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum

It was during these six months that van Gogh painted two portraits of Reid, as well as completing several sketches of him. Van Gogh and Reid were not only friends, often spending their weekends painting together, but they also resembled each other physically, as can be seen when comparing Self-Portrait with a Grey Felt Hat (1887) with Alexander Reid (1854-1928) (1887), which was long thought to be one of van Gogh’s self-portraits.

Vincent van Gogh, Alexander Reid (1854-1928), 1887, Oil on Board, 42 x 33 cm, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. Image courtesy of Art UK

Indeed, van Gogh and Reid’s mutual friend, Scottish artist Archibald Standish Hartrick, wrote in his 1939 memoir A Painter’s Pilgrimage through Fifty Years that he was never sure which one of them was approaching him until he saw either Reid or van Gogh up close, adding that they were similar even in dress. It was only when Reid’s son, Alexander James McNeill Reid, saw the pointillist work in a catalogue of van Gogh’s oeuvre that he recognised his father in what is now titled Alexander Reid (1854-1928).

This striking resemblance has gone so far as to spark the theory that they made a pact to swap their identities, van Gogh returning to Scotland in Reid’s place. However, this is merely the product of someone’s vivid imagination. Instead, it seems to have been Reid’s business-oriented attitude that led to a fallout between him and the van Gogh brothers, leading to his eventual return to Scotland in 1889.

Back in Glasgow, he opened his own gallery, La Société des Beaux-Arts, on West George Street. There, he showed works by the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Glasgow Boys, amongst others, thus introducing the French artists he had met and admired in Paris to his Glaswegian public. The gallery also lent its support to another group of Scottish artists: the Scottish Colourists. In fact, it was Reid junior who first brought the four artists together in the 1924 exhibition Les Peintres de l’Écosse Moderne at the Galerie Barbazange in Paris, four years before his father’s death. Previously, McNeill Reid had staged a show at the Leicester Galleries in London of all Colourists but Fergusson. By bringing the artists together under a single name he made them known to a wider public and ensured their commercial success.

Although Alexander Reid may not be as well-known as van Gogh on the international stage, he remains an important figure in the Scottish art world, as the works he brought over from France significantly changed attitudes towards modern art in Scotland. Today, many of these artworks can be found in important Scottish museum collections, such as the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Reid junior was named after his father’s friend the American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler and eventually joined his father’s gallery, playing an important role in its support of the Scottish Colourists. As an aside, continuing the Glasgow connection, Whistler’s executor gifted an extensive collection of his works to the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.

Bibliography

BBC. “Scottish Roots. Histories. Whistler’s Mother and the West Coast.” 16 October, 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/scottishroots/histories/whistler.shtml

Cascone, Sarah. “Did Vincent van Gogh Trade Lives With a Scottish Doppelgänger After a Failed Suicide Pact? We’re Glad You Asked.” Artnet, June 19, 2017. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vincent-van-gogh-alexander-reid-traded-lives-990890

Fowle, Frances. Van Gogh’s twin: the Scottish art dealer Alexander Reid 1854-1928. National Galleries of Scotland, 2010.

Smilie, Liam. “A Portrait of Alexander Reid: How Van Gogh’s painting tells the story of his bond with his Glasgow flatmate.” GlasgowWorld, March 30, 2023. https://www.glasgowworld.com/news/people/a-portrait-of-alexander-reid-explained-by-van-gogh-who-was-alexander-reid-kelvingrove-how-did-glasgow-artist-know-van-gogh-4086451