While traveling in Europe this summer, I stopped by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and noticed a few empty spaces where paintings ought to have been. This bothered me, for, after all, I had come to the museum to see paintings I couldn't see anywhere in the United States, and the paintings were obviously missing.

But this summer, many of van Gogh's (1853-1890) portraits were spending their summer here in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts, as part of Van Gogh: Face to Face. Although this exhibit left empty spaces in museums such as the Muse dursay in Paris and the Kršller-MŸller Museum in the Netherlands, it is significant in that it is the first exhibit ever to focus solely on van Gogh's portraits.

Yet the paintings will return home as well, leaving Boston on the 24th. After a stop in Philadelphia, the paintings will again be dispersed. Catching this phenomenal compilation of rarely seen portraits before it leaves ought to be a priority for anyone who even remotely enjoys looking at art. You don't need to concentrate in Visual and Environmental Studies or the History of Art and Architecture to appreciate this show of over 70 portraits, arranged chronologically and curated nearly perfectly by a team drawn from the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the MFA. Anyone stopping in for a brief peek will see not only van Gogh's growth as an artist but also something of van Gogh's personality, from his relationships to his personal philosophy.

Mention van Gogh and images of sunflowers, trees and the find-me-in-any-poster-shop 'Starry Night' (1889) come to mind. And while it is easy to be swept away by his lively French landscapes or his gorgeous renditions of flowers, van Gogh himself considered portrait painting a supremely important part of his work, writing to his younger sister:

'What impassions me most - much, much more than all the rest of my mŽtier's the portrait, the modern portrait...I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in a hundred years' time...I am trying to achieve this not by photographic likeness but by rendering our impassioned expressions, using our modern knowledge of an appreciation of color as a means of rendering and exalting character.'

Van Gogh did not begin his life as an artist but as a preacher. The exhibit unfairly glosses over this fundamental decision and instead simply begins with a short biographical history and places his first drawings from 1881 and 1882, when he was living in The Hague, in the same room. This section features van Gogh's first portrait and his dark drawings of pensioners in charcoal, chalk and ink.

The exhibit clearly underscores van Gogh's rejection of ideally beautiful, perfect figures. 'I find a power and vitality which, if one wants to express them in their peculiar character, ought to be painted with a firm brush stroke, with a simple technique,' van Gogh said, referring to the common men he preferred painting. The first rooms feature a haunting display of old pensioners, fishermen and weavers with craggy, misshapen faces. They have a serene dignity, particularly 'Orphan Man with Top Hat' (1882). Van Gogh's drawings reflect his eagerness to express the humanity of his subjects.

Face to Face reveals the many personal traumas in van Gogh's life. While in The Hague, to his family's severe chagrin, van Gogh began living with a former prostitute, Sien, and her mother and children. His earlier portraits of Sien, which occupy more than a wall of the exhibition, reflect a woman defined by hardship and given a sense of beauty. Cleverly juxtaposed with these images are later ones, from 1883, showing an aged, unsmiling and cynical Sien. Shortly after one particularly jaded drawing, van Gogh upped and left for Nuenen, a village in the Netherlands, to live with his parents.