Vincent van Gogh – Drawings

 

Vincent van Gogh was, as you call it, a tormented soul. Did he not understand the world or was it the other way around? Didn’t the world understand him? When you read his letters to Theo, the sentences about his work naturally leave a deep impression. His passion and unwavering diligence drag you along. The letters also report on his eternal money problems and the people with whom he could not get along. Many quarrels characterize his life. Yes, socially he was a bit sloppy. This did not always benefit his work.

 

After roaming in London, Paris and the Borinage, he finally ended up with his parents in Neunen.  He first aspired to a career as an art dealer at Goupil & Cie. Later he tried to become a pastor. Only in Belgium did he really start to draw and paint. Because he rejected this work himself, he threw away the most. So very little is left of it. He arrived in Neunen on December 5, 1883. He had no money to pay for models. So he painted the people from the village. He recorded the harsh peasant life.

A year and a half later, Vincent’s father died. Pastor Theodorus van Gogh collapsed after a long walk on the heath. “With the doorknob in hand”. Shortly thereafter it was rumoured that Vincent had conceived an illegitimate child with the farmer’s daughter Sien de Groot. She regularly posed for him. Andreas Pauwels, the pastor of the Catholic Church, forbade his parishioners to be a model for Vincent any longer. She only told Vincent who the real father was. On her deathbed, she got absolute from the pastor. So getting pregnant without getting married was forgiven her.

 

Eventually, the stay in Nuenen became untenable and on November 23, 1885, Vincent left for Antwerp. He left everything behind in Nuenen: hundreds of paintings, drawings and watercolours. The complete oeuvre from his Dutch period. An exception to this was the works he had given away, exchanged or sent to his brother Theo.

So here his “social concerns” had an extremely negative influence on his work.

 

His paintings first stayed with his mother, Anna Carbentus van Gogh, in Nuenen. When she moved to Breda, they were sent afterwards. Money had to be found to package them well. An inheritance offered a solution. When Anna finally left for Leiden, the crates with artworks remained. They were forgotten in an attic and eventually ended up with Jan Couvreur. He sold many drawings as old paper. He gave away paintings or sold them for a very small amount. Nobody knows how many there were or what was destroyed. You can read about what happened to Vincent’s work during that period in Dr’s Kees Wouters excellent research: “Gek van van Gogh”.  Sorry only in Dutch. But you can use translate and get an impression.

 

 

In 1905 Vincent van Gogh was not yet world-famous. He only had fans among artists and art lovers. The Kirchner publisher in Amsterdam, therefore, reproduced (heliogravures) 100 drawings from the Hidde Nijland collection and brought them in 1905 to the general public. Was this the first impetus for Vincent’s worldwide fame?

 

 

But, The Mantifang also has this folder in its possession. Its cover is badly damaged, but the reproductions themselves are very beautiful. Because we mainly want to collect information about East Asia in our library, we now offer the reproductions for sale separately. Every copy offered is unique. We only have one.