At Eternity's Gate
Vincent van Gogh Dutch
Not on view
Lithography fascinated Van Gogh early in his career, but he made very few prints due to financial constraints. "At Eternity’s Gate" is one of the very rare survivals of his first printmaking campaign during which he produced six lithographs in November 1882. His ambition was to publish a series of thirty prints in order disseminate his work to a broad audience and to earn the attention of magazine editors in the hope of receiving commissions as an illustrator. This print stands out among the group for the spiritual weight the artist attached to it, evoked by the combination of the title with the despairing pose of the model. It remained meaningful to him throughout his career: he brought an impression with him to Paris and went to the trouble of having it framed. Then, in 1890 while in the asylum in Saint-Rémy, he made a painting based on the print (Kröller-Müller Museum). It is the only one of his prints that he copied in oil.