Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings

Ives, Colta, Susan Alyson Stein, Sjraar van Heugten, and Marije Vellekoop, with Marjorie Shelley (2005)

This title is out of print.

Description

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890) believed that drawing was "the root of everything." A self-taught artist, he succeeded, between 1881 and 1890, in developing an inimitable graphic style. This book traces the artist's successive triumphs as a draftsman, first in the Netherlands and later in France, highlighting the diversity of his technical invention and the striking continuity of his vision. Given the pivotal role drawings played in Van Gogh's artistic conception and the rich dialectic they enjoyed with his oil paintings, a small selection of related canvases by the artist is also featured. This book presents approximately 120 works in charcoal, ink, graphite, watercolor, and diluted oils. The authors explore enduring questions that surround Van Gogh's drawings, including their manufacture, artistic precedents, and contribution to Modernism. In addition, the text discusses the significance of the artist's drawing practice to his development as a painter. The essays and entries feature the most current research on Van Gogh's drawings and provide fresh interpretations of the motivating influences that shaped the artist's contributions to the history of drawing.

Table of contents

Sponsor's Statement
Director's Foreword
Lenders to the Exhibition
Preface and Acknowledgments
Notes to the Reader

Out of Line: How Van Gogh Made His Mark
Colta Ives

The Paper Trail: From Portfolios to Posterity
Susan Alyson Stein

Metamorphoses: Van Gogh's Drawings Then and Now
Sjaar van Heugten

Catalogue

The Dutch Years, 1880–85
Sjraar van Heugten

Arles, 1888–89: The Synthesis
Sjraar van Heugten

First Encounters
Susan Alyson Stein

A Visit to the Sea
Colta Ives

Summer Harvest
Colta Ives

Figure and Portrait Drawings
Susan Alyson Stein

The Heights of Montmajour
Colta Ives

Gardens, Parks, and Byways
Colta Ives

Répétitions: Drawings after Paintings
Susan Alyson Stein

Drawing to a Close
Susan Alyson Stein

Saint-Rémy, 1889–90: The Asylum
Marije Vellekoop

Auvers, 1890: Return to the North
Marije Vellekoop

Infrared Reflectography: The Drawings under the Drawings

Technical Studies: Observations on the Drawing Materials Used by Van Gogh in Provence
Marjorie Shelley

Appendixes: Summaries of Scientific Analyses of Drawing Materials
Silvia A. Centeno

List of Abbreviated Exhibitions and Publications

Index

About the authors

Colta Ives is Curator, Drawing and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Susan Alyson Stein is Curator; Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sjaar van Heugten is Head of Collections, Van Gogh Museum.

Marije Vellekoop is Curator of Drawings, Van Gogh Museum.

Press reviews

Art in America

"Two trends stand out: efforts to publish all the drawings more thoroughly than ever before, and increasingly sophisticated analysis of them by conservation specialists."

American Artist Magazine

"... presents some 100 drawings and several illuminating essays that will go a long way toward recognizing Van Gogh's lasting impact."

Times Literary Supplement

"... offers the most comprehensive view yet of his graphic work and reveals much about artist and oeuvre alike."

San Francisco Chronicle

"... magnificent ..."

Library Journal

"A thorough and scholarly study with beautiful reproductions, this book is recommended for libraries collecting in art history."

Choice Reviews Online

"If there is such a thing as a perfect publication to accompany an exhibition, this could be it. ... There are a number of artists and art enthusiasts who believe that Van Gogh's drawings are generally superior to his paintings, which as paintings are highly graphic. The catalog brilliantly supports the proposition with superb illustration and incisive yet accessible analysis."

Tags

Authors

Colta Feller Ives | Marije Vellekoop | Marjorie Shelley | Sjraar van Heugten | Susan Alyson Stein

Artists

Gogh, Vincent van (Dutch, 1853–1890)

Keywords

European Art in the 19th Century

Modern and Contemporary Art

Titles by author (52)

Sjraar van Heugten

Colta Feller Ives

Marjorie Shelley

Susan Alyson Stein

Marije Vellekoop

Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings

A large and significant part of Van Gogh's production that remains comparatively unknown is featured in this first major American retrospective of the artist's drawings. The exhibition includes a selection of more than one hundred works ingeniously composed in pen and ink, graphite, chalk, charcoal, and watercolor, along with a group of related paintings. These graphic images, lent by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and from fifty other public and private collections, brilliantly illustrate Vincent's own dictum: "Drawing is the root of everything."

Retrospective in scope, this exhibition traces the artist's successive triumphs as a draftsman, first in the Netherlands and later in France, highlighting the originality of his invention and the striking continuity of his vision. Among the works exhibited is an early series of large-scale views of the garden at his father's vicarage drawn by Van Gogh in March 1884. Distinctive for their melancholy grandeur and regarded as the high point of his early work as a draftsman, drawings from this ambitious suite, including two versions of Winter Garden in contrasting horizontal and vertical formats, are reunited in the present show...