Van Gogh Museum - Pollard birches

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Pollard birches, 1884

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Pencil, pen in brown (once black) ink, heightened with white opaque watercolour, on wove paper, 39 x 54 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Stichting)
F 1240

Trees were an important source of inspiration for Van Gogh. Gnarled willows, oaks and beeches are the main motif in some twenty of his drawings and paintings. In this work the artist has drawn several rows of pollarded birches in a highly competent pen technique. On either side of the birches he has added a figure, a shepherd with a flock of sheep and a woman with a rake over her shoulder.
In a letter to Theo from 1882 Van Gogh revealed that he saw ‘something like a soul’ in trees. He must have been similarly inspired when he depicted these expressive, rather tragic-looking pollarded birches.

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Young artist 1880 - 1885

In his early years as an artist, Van Gogh lived and worked in various parts of the Netherlands.

Drawings

One of the finest collections of drawings by Vincent van Gogh can be found in the Van Gogh Museum.

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Ink corrosion

This work is one of a group of six pen drawings of landscapes that Van Gogh produced in Nuenen during the first half of March 1884. Another work from the group is The kingfisher.
Van Gogh began with a preliminary sketch in pencil, then drew over this in pen and ink. Over time the original black ink has faded to its present brown tone. The drawing has also suffered corrosion as a result of Van Gogh’s use of iron gall ink. In other words, the chemical composition of the ink is progressively destroying the drawing, ‘consuming’ the paper as it were.

The kingfisher