Van Gogh Museum - Old vineyard with peasant woman

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Old vineyard with peasant woman, 1890

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Brush in oil and watercolour, pencil on laid paper, 44 x 54 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Stichting)
F 1624

Van Gogh produced this drawing in Auvers in May 1890, on one of his first days in the village. He experimented in this work, and also in Cottages with thatched roofs, drawn in the same period, with various tints of blue, ranging from deep dark blue to watery light blue. As a contrasting accent he included a couple of bright orange roofs, that have now faded to reddish-brown. This work harks back to Van Gogh’s colour experiments in drawings from his Paris period from early 1887 and also to several still lifes produced in Saint-Remy, in some of which the flowers form a simultaneous contrast with the background and in others a complementary contrast.

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Auvers-sur-Oise 1890

For the last two months of his life, Van Gogh lived in Auvers-sur-Oise. In late July 1890, he shot himself in the chest, and he died in the presence of his brother Theo.

Drawings

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

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Oil and watercolour

Van Gogh produced more than 70 paintings in Auvers and only a small number of large, ambitious drawings, including this work in oil and watercolour. He began by laying out an extensive under-drawing in pencil, then filled in the sky with watercolour, leaving some areas blank for the white clouds. The rest of the scene is constructed of sturdy, flowing lines that cause the work to resemble a pen-and-ink drawing. However, Van Gogh’s materials were brush and oil paint, as is evident from the impasto application and the seepage of oil to the verso of the paper.