Van Gogh liked to paint the places he visited. When you look at his paintings, you can almost imagine you are there with him. In Farms near Auvers, the bright greens make you feel like you are standing in the French countryside. This painting was made towards the end of Van Gogh’s career. Earlier, he had used darker colours. As he grew older, he liked using lighter colours.
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890): The Drawings
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. Van Gogh engaged drawing and painting in a rich dialogue, which enabled him to fully realize the creative potential of both means of expression. Largely self-taught, Van Gogh believed that drawing was “the root of everything.” His reasons for drawing were numerous. At the outset of his career, he felt it necessary to master black and white before attempting to work in color. Thus, drawings formed an inextricable part of his development as a painter. There were periods when he wished to do nothing but draw. 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. 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. 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. 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 produced most of his greatest drawings and watercolors during the little more than two years he spent working in Provence. Etten: 1881
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. 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. Hoping to become a genre illustrator/painter, Van Gogh began by drawing figures in relatively static poses, usually in profile. In a few unpremeditated landscapes of this period, the artist revealed, for the first time, uncommon spirit and ingenuity. The Hague, Drenthe, and Nuenen: 1882–85
While in the Netherlands, Van Gogh remained focused on his study of the human figure. 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. In The Hague (January 1882–September 1883), he found models to draw in shelters for the poor and in crowded back streets. In rural Nuenen (December 1883–November 1885), he studied peasants working the earth or weaving at looms. Always more at ease drawing landscapes, Van Gogh continued to record local scenery in increasingly intricate penwork while perfecting his mastery of perspective. He enjoyed contact with the Hague school artists and picked up commissions for two series of city views from his uncle C. M. Van Gogh, an art dealer. 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. Antwerp and Paris: 1885–88
After 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. 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. He awakened to the bright palette of the Impressionists, the pointillist touch of the Neo-Impressionists, and the novelties of imported Japanese prints. Like so many of his most advanced contemporaries, he put aside the practice of drawing to paint in short, semigraphic strokes. In focusing his sights on the city and its suburbs, he kept pace with current trends and found scenery that reminded him of home. Sojourn in Arles: February 1888–May 1889
After two years in Paris, Van Gogh longed for a sunny retreat where he could “recover and regain [his] peace of mind and self-composure.” In February 1888, he headed south to the town of Arles. He hoped to attract other colleagues to his “Studio of the South,” but aside from Gauguin’s fateful stay that fall, Van Gogh spent most of his fifteen-month sojourn alone. His Provençal outpost did not guarantee the fellowship he craved, but instead afforded him the distance necessary for his art to come into his own. In Arles, Van Gogh depended largely on pen and paper for feedback and dialogue. Drawing, like writing, regained the importance it had held for him earlier in the Netherlands and once again became a staple of his working practice. He discovered in the reed pen—which he made from local hollow-barreled grass, sharpened with a penknife—a drawing tool entirely sympathetic to his aims: easy to acquire and use, bold and incisive in his statement. In turn, he set out to do “an ENORMOUS amount of drawing,” armed with the means to produce works in line that were as compelling as those in color. Casting aside the traditional roles accorded to drawing and painting, Van Gogh fully realized the creative potential of both. Répétitions: Drawings after Paintings
While living apart from the mainstream, Van Gogh routinely relied on his drawings—small sketches in his letters as well as full-fledged sheets—to give his family and friends a sense of his recent work. In Provence, he exploited old strategies in novel ways. During the summer of 1888, while his latest oil paintings were tacked up on the walls of his studio to dry, he devoted three weeks to reproducing them in thirty-two pen-and-ink drawings that he sent to fellow artists Émile Bernard and John Russell, and to his brother Theo. Van Gogh selected and crafted the images with each of the recipients clearly in mind. With these successive suites of drawings, he hoped to elicit an exchange of works with Bernard, to win over the recalcitrant Russell as a prospective patron for Gauguin, and to report his progress to Theo. None of his drawings is a slavish copy—far from it. Van Gogh used the opportunity to reconsider and reinvigorate his original conceptions in a series of richly inventive linear improvisations. Taking Asylum in Saint-Rémy: May 1889–May 1890
Van Gogh spent a year as a voluntary patient at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy. Under the care of doctors (who diagnosed his illness as a form of epilepsy), the artist forged ahead, the pace of his accomplishment slowed only by hospital restrictions, recurrent attacks, and depleted or embargoed art supplies. These challenges did not defeat his creative spirit, but spurred it on. When he was unable to paint, he resorted to his drawing tools, sometimes in novel combinations with whatever materials he had on hand. The drawings Van Gogh produced during this period are stylistically diverse and richly inventive. Those in color—like his contemporaneous paintings—succeed in wedding expressive line to color, synthesizing the breakthroughs he had achieved in Arles with inimitable ingenuity. Auvers: May–June 1890
Van Gogh checked himself out of the asylum at Saint-Rémy on May 16, 1890, and headed north to the town of Auvers, not far from Paris, where he could live close to Theo and be cared for by Dr. Paul Gachet, a collector and amateur artist. Enchanted by the quaint hamlet and refreshed by the quality of the northern light, Van Gogh responded with a new palette of blues and greens carried by rhythmic, undulating lines. In seventy days he produced nearly seventy-five paintings and fifty drawings—mostly quick sketches. Van Gogh’s career came to an abrupt end when he died on July 29, 1890, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. By the time of his death, the paintings he had shown in recent exhibitions in Paris and Brussels had begun to command the interest of artists and critics. Prospects looked even brighter for Van Gogh’s work as a draftsman—as one writer boldly predicted: “It may be certain that in the future the artist who died young will receive attention primarily for his drawings.”
Citation
Ives, Colta, and Susan Alyson Stein. “Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890): The Drawings.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh_d/hd_gogh_d.htm (October 2005)
Further Reading
Brooks, David. Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Works. CD-ROM. Sharon, Mass.: Barewalls Publications, 2002. Dorn, Roland, et al. Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000. Druick, Douglas W., et al. Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001. Ives, Colta, et al. Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. See on MetPublications Kendall, Richard. Van Gogh’s Van Gogh’s: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1998. The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh. 3 vols. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2000. Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Arles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984. See on MetPublications Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. See on MetPublications Selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London: Penguin, 2006. Stein, Susan Alyson, ed. Van Gogh: A Retrospective. New York: New Line Books, 2006. Stolwijk, Chris, and Richard Thomson. Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1999.
Additional Essays by Colta Ives
- Ives, Colta. “The Printed Image in the West: Aquatint.” (October 2003)
- Ives, Colta. “The Print in the Nineteenth Century.” (October 2004)
- Ives, Colta. “Japonisme.” (October 2004)
- Ives, Colta. “Lithography in the Nineteenth Century.” (October 2004)
Related Essays
- Japonisme
- Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
- Post-Impressionism
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
- Frans Hals (1582/83–1666)
- Georges Seurat (1859–1891) and Neo-Impressionism
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
- Impressionism: Art and Modernity
- Nineteenth-Century French Realism
- The Print in the Nineteenth Century
- Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669): Prints
- The Transformation of Landscape Painting in France
- List of Rulers of Europe
The man who painted Sunflowers
Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s most famous painters. When you start school, one of the first artworks that you will ever look at is probably Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. This painting is very famous. Look at its bright yellows and the way each of the fourteen sunflowers are painted differently. Van Gogh painted Sunflowers for the room in the yellow house he was renting in Arles, France. His friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, was coming to visit and Van Gogh wanted to redecorate.
Today, most people know the name Vincent van Gogh. However, when he was alive, he was not very famous at all. Since his death, he has become one of the most successful painters in history. People across the world have admired his unique style. If you look closely at his paintings, the brushstrokes are broken up. It is as if you can see each time Van Gogh put his brush on the canvas. Do you like this style?
In total, Van Gogh made around 2,100 artworks. So, if you only know Sunflowers, there are many more paintings by him to discover.
What inspired him?
Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands, but travelled across Europe. He went to France, Belgium and England. When he was in London, he was inspired by all the art he saw in galleries. Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, worked in an art gallery and introduced Van Gogh to many artworks. Van Gogh was interested in painters who were painting everyday life.
When he was 27, he decided to become an artist. Up until then, he had been a teacher, a shop assistant and had dreams of working for the Church. All of these experiences inspired his art.
Why did he die so young?
It is a really sad story. Van Gogh struggled with mental health problems. This meant that he sometimes felt very angry or sad and was not able to control his emotions. Sometimes, he would harm himself and have blackouts. Van Gogh used painting as a way to express his emotions and way to help with his illness.
Van Gogh’s did not get the help he needed and there was not the same understanding of mental health as there is today. Van Gogh felt alone and was not able to handle the pressure of his emotions. He died by suicide. He was only 37. It is sad to think of all the wonderful artworks he could have painted had he gotten better.
