Landscape pen drawing11/15/2023 Like so many of his most advanced contemporaries, he put aside the practice of drawing to paint in short, semigraphic strokes. He awakened to the bright palette of the Impressionists, the pointillist touch of the Neo-Impressionists, and the novelties of imported Japanese prints. In the French capital (March 1886–February 1888), Van Gogh came in contact with many of the avant-garde artists of the era, including Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, and Gauguin. After a brief sojourn to the peat fields of Drenthe (September–November 1883), he discovered his voice as a draftsman in Nuenen when he described winter’s bleak trees in the garden of his father’s vicarage.Īfter a short, frustrating effort to conform to the standards of the Antwerp art academy, Van Gogh headed for Paris to move in with his brother Theo and to study at Fernand Cormon’s atelier, where he met fellow students Toulouse-Lautrec, Émile Bernard, and John Russell. He enjoyed contact with the Hague school artists and picked up commissions for two series of city views from his uncle C. In rural Nuenen (December 1883–November 1885), he studied peasants working the earth or weaving at looms.Īlways more at ease drawing landscapes, Van Gogh continued to record local scenery in increasingly intricate penwork while perfecting his mastery of perspective. In The Hague (January 1882–September 1883), he found models to draw in shelters for the poor and in crowded back streets. He was profoundly inspired by the social realism of the masters Rembrandt, Millet, and Daumier but also admired the dark graphic reports of magazine illustrators. While in the Netherlands, Van Gogh remained focused on his study of the human figure. In a few unpremeditated landscapes of this period, the artist revealed, for the first time, uncommon spirit and ingenuity. Hoping to become a genre illustrator/painter, Van Gogh began by drawing figures in relatively static poses, usually in profile. He moved from Brussels to his parents’ house in Etten and applied himself wholeheartedly to a self-designed program of instruction focused on drawing and the study of artists’ books on technique, anatomy, and perspective. Van Gogh was aimless until, in late 1880, he decided to take up the practice of art-mainly on the advice of his brother Theo, who was his principal source of support. Van Gogh produced most of his greatest drawings and watercolors during the little more than two years he spent working in Provence. Yet, more often than not, he reversed the process by making drawings after his paintings to give his brother and his friends an idea of his latest work. Van Gogh used drawing to practice interesting subjects or to capture an on-the-spot impression, to tackle a motif before venturing it on canvas, and to prepare a composition. When the fierce mistral winds made it impossible for him to set up an easel, he found he could draw on sheets of paper tacked securely to board. Sometimes, it was a question of economics: the materials he needed to create his drawings-paper and ink purchased at nearby shops and pens he himself cut with a penknife from locally grown reeds-were cheap, whereas costly paints and canvases had to be ordered and shipped from Paris. There were periods when he wished to do nothing but draw. Thus, drawings formed an inextricable part of his development as a painter. At the outset of his career, he felt it necessary to master black and white before attempting to work in color. Largely self-taught, Van Gogh believed that drawing was “the root of everything.” His reasons for drawing were numerous. Van Gogh engaged drawing and painting in a rich dialogue, which enabled him to fully realize the creative potential of both means of expression. Generally overshadowed by the fame and familiarity of his paintings, Vincent van Gogh’s more than 1,100 drawings remain comparatively unknown, although they are among his most ingenious and striking creations.
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