Essays
Long-form essays around Van Gogh key works, letters and technique evolution.
- How the Canvas Participates Canvas, cardboard, grounds and reused supports shaped the way Paris works were seen, made and dated.
- How Paris Paintings Are Dated Paris works are dated by converging clues: letters, seasons, locations, supports, pigments and continuity of touch.
- From Realism to Modernism Van Gogh's turn was not a sudden change of style, but a continuous chain from peasant subjects and Antwerp training to Rubens, Japanese prints and Parisian colour.
- 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 the same kind of commercial ink used for letters and document copies.
- 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.