How Van Gogh’s drawing skills were once trumped by a 16-year-old girl

A just lately found sketchbook by 16-year-old Catharina Kam features a drawing of an aged girl peeling potatoes, a topic tackled concurrently by Van Gogh. Catharina alongside together with her brothers Jan and Willem knew Vincent nicely, and collectively they used to go on sketching excursions within the Dutch countryside. It was virtually actually on considered one of these events that Catharina and Vincent each drew the girl.

Catharina’s drawing is reproduced for the primary time within the Atlas Van Gogh in Brabant, by Helewise Berger and Ron Dirven, printed yesterday (30 March), on Vincent’s birthday. It was launched on the Vincent van Gogh Home in Zundert, the artist’s birthplace. The profusely illustrated e book in Dutch offers particulars of 46 websites regarding Van Gogh’s life in Brabant, the province within the south of the Netherlands close to the Belgian border the place he was introduced up and the place his dad and mom lived.

Catharina (1865-1955) was the daughter of the Reverend Jan Gerrit Kam (1833-1917), the pastor within the village of Leur, which lies adjoining to Etten, the place Vincent’s father Theodorus served in the identical position. The 2 Protestant clergymen had been colleagues and their youngsters turned associates.

Vincent, then 28, lived in Etten from April to December 1881. A 12 months earlier, whereas he was an evangelist within the Belgian coal mining space of the Borinage, he realised that he was failing in his vocation – and he determined to got down to grow to be an artist. However his early efforts at drawing had been crude and he discovered it difficult.

Catharina’s older brother Jan Benjamin (1860-1932) later recalled that in Etten-Leur Van Gogh would sketch the native peasants. In 1912 Jan wrote to the critic Albert Plasschaert: “He was drawing sowers then, and went into small dwellings to attract the girl performing some home chore.”

The sketches by Vincent and Catharina each depict the identical girl in her cottage dwelling, sitting and getting ready potatoes beside a window. Though the compositions are very related, the girl is depicted from barely completely different angles, with Catherina apparently positioned whereas drawing simply to the left of Vincent.

The completely different angles imply that one drawing shouldn’t be merely a replica of the opposite, they usually should each have been carried out from life. We will date the event, since Vincent wrote to his brother Theo in mid-September 1881 that he was drawing “a lady with a white cap who’s peeling potatoes”. Vincent additionally appears to have made one other smaller sketch on the identical event, however the one illustrated above with Catharina’s drawing appears to have been the extra thought-about.

The id of the girl, carrying a standard white bonnet and picket clogs, stays unknown. Van Gogh has included a view from her window, a row of pollarded willows, however that is in all probability an imaginary panorama typical of the world, and never what may truly be seen from inside her hut. Catharina solely vaguely indicated the window, leaving better emphasis on the determine.

The picket bucket is in several positions within the two drawings, so both Vincent or Catharina could nicely have shifted it to enhance their composition. Vincent added a bit of watercolour to his drawing, blue and crimson on the girl’s clothes and crimson to point the darkish inside of the bucket. Catharina additionally included a white fabric or apron on the girl’s lap.

What’s putting is that Van Gogh had nice problem in dealing with the attitude of the chair: the decrease crossbars on the entrance seem like virtually a continuation of the facet ones, relatively than being depicted at extra of extra of an angle. He has additionally made the girl’s higher leg far too lengthy in relation to the remainder of her physique.

Catharina has captured the attitude and proportions extra efficiently, though each of them have made the top relatively small. Her drawing additionally conveys extra of the girl’s focus on her job.

So in 1881 was the younger Catharina a greater artist?

Dirven factors out that she was “nicely educated and mastered drawing strategies remarkably nicely”. Catharina was “extra academically schooled, while Vincent targeted extra on expression, disliking a tutorial strategy”. However from a technical standpoint, she was clearly extra superior.

On the time Vincent admitted to his brother Theo that he had a lot to study, though he was making progress. In the identical letter in regards to the potato peeler, he added: “What used to look to me to be desperately unattainable is now progressively changing into attainable, thank God… Diggers, sowers, ploughers, women and men I have to now draw continually. Look at and draw all the things that’s a part of a peasant’s life.”

A month after the drawing session with Catharina, Vincent made a way more achieved watercolour, setting the girl towards a darkish background. This time he averted the perspectival issues of depicting the chair, by omitting the entrance crossbars (they’re partially disguised by the girl’s gown). He additionally moved the bucket to the foreground, apparently following Catharina’s lead.

After his preliminary efforts in Etten, Van Gogh’s progress was swift. Inside a couple of years, he had mastered perspective. He turned so proficient that he would typically intentionally flout the legal guidelines of perspective, to attain an impact. This may be seen in his evocative portray of The Bed room (October 1888), accomplished simply six years after his hesitant Etten drawings.

By full coincidence, the one picture that appears to have survived of Catharina at roughly the time she knew Van Gogh is a watercolour which reveals her in a reasonably related pose to the aged girl. Catharina rests one foot on a standard field hotter. Depicted seated, from the same angle, she too concentrates on a job – crocheting or lace-making, relatively than peeling potatoes. It was painted by her brother Willem Hendrik (1863-1918), who went on to grow to be an architect and draughtsman.

Melitta Steenhuis, a great-granddaughter of the Reverend Kam, informed me that his youngsters had been “introduced up in an inventive household” and in response to custom typically went out drawing with Van Gogh. Melitta herself is a sculptor and makes jewelry, suggesting that the Kam household has misplaced none of their abilities.

The Atlas Van Gogh in Brabant is because of be printed in English, hopefully later this 12 months.