Essays
Long-form essays around Van Gogh key works, letters and technique evolution.
- A Single Reed In 1881 a drawing manual noted that the best reed pens grew in the South of France. Seven years later he actually went south, cut himself a reed — and in two months drew the finest sheets of his life. Materials analysis adds a quiet revelation: he drew with letter-writing ink.
- Time, the Collaborator The violet ink of Montmajour has faded almost to nothing, the blue Paris paper has turned a dirty yellow, the pink of the peach blossoms has evaporated into white specks. A hundred and thirty years of light and oxidation keep rewriting these drawings — and some of the rewriting, strangely, lets us see his working method for the first time.
- What Did He Actually See? Around Jean-Pierre Luminet's research into The Starry Night: how the swirls, astronomical memory and artistic instinct in Van Gogh's skies actually meet.