Torso of Venus
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Paris, June 1886
oil on cardboard,
35.3 cm x 27.2 cm
Credits (obliged to state): Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
This painting is one of a series of studies of plaster models. Van Gogh owned around eleven such models of sculptures from classical antiquity or the Renaissance. Among them was this standing torso of Venus, which he painted a number of times.
Among other things, Van Gogh was experimenting with the effect of different kinds of background. Here, he has placed his brushstrokes at right-angles to each other, so that they look rather like wickerwork. He would use this technique more than once in his later work.
