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Lot Essay
The present sheet is the most articulate and complex of a series of multi-study drawings executed by van Gogh in July 1890 in Auvers, a month before his death (the others are Hulsker, nos. 2077-2079). This work is the only one from this group still in private hands; the others are housed today in the Louvre, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam.
The strength and character of the present work resides in its powerful, almost obsessive overcrowding of the sheet with incisive observations, independent vignettes, and studies for paintings or details of paintings that Van Gogh, overwhelmed by yet another violent crisis, could never begin. Each figure is traced with a greasy, heavy stroke of charcoal; the silhouettes are defined by a consistently sharp line, with even more trenchant passages in the girl's striped frock and the woman's dress. The artist fills every corner available, subdividing the space in small paintings--clearly singled-out by lightly traced frames, as in the upper center of the sheet. The staccato rendering of the clothing on some figures is almost a translation in pencil of Vincent's nervous linear brushstrokes seen in his Auvers paintings.
Although neither De La Faille (op. cit.) nor Hulsker (op. cit.) relate any sketch of this sheet to a precise painting, it is possible to connect the profile of the girl in the upper left of the recto to the portraits of Adeline Ravoux, an innkeeper's daughter (H., no. 2035 and 2037)--whose long, curly hair is depicted here bundled in a loose braid over her back. The various groupings of women and men seen from behind appear in many oils of June 1890, but the composition closest to these sketches is Femmes dans les champs (H., no. 2112), where the artist treated the curved lines that define the womens' dresses exactly as in the present drawing.
The strength and character of the present work resides in its powerful, almost obsessive overcrowding of the sheet with incisive observations, independent vignettes, and studies for paintings or details of paintings that Van Gogh, overwhelmed by yet another violent crisis, could never begin. Each figure is traced with a greasy, heavy stroke of charcoal; the silhouettes are defined by a consistently sharp line, with even more trenchant passages in the girl's striped frock and the woman's dress. The artist fills every corner available, subdividing the space in small paintings--clearly singled-out by lightly traced frames, as in the upper center of the sheet. The staccato rendering of the clothing on some figures is almost a translation in pencil of Vincent's nervous linear brushstrokes seen in his Auvers paintings.
Although neither De La Faille (op. cit.) nor Hulsker (op. cit.) relate any sketch of this sheet to a precise painting, it is possible to connect the profile of the girl in the upper left of the recto to the portraits of Adeline Ravoux, an innkeeper's daughter (H., no. 2035 and 2037)--whose long, curly hair is depicted here bundled in a loose braid over her back. The various groupings of women and men seen from behind appear in many oils of June 1890, but the composition closest to these sketches is Femmes dans les champs (H., no. 2112), where the artist treated the curved lines that define the womens' dresses exactly as in the present drawing.