Three new drawings by Vincent van Gogh, drawn in Etten (-Leur), have been found. The drawings are interesting because they are new and were totally unknown. Something like this is still rare. Van Gogh made the drawings in the fall of 1881, at the beginning of his artistic career. Two years later, the painter sent them in a book to his friend Anthon van Rappard. After the latter died in 1892 at the age of 33, the book and bookmark remained in the possession of his family. In 2019, they sold the possessions to the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam. This considers the drawings special acquisitions.
According to Van Gogh connoisseur Martin Bailey of The Art Newspaper, Van Gogh chose a very unusual format, a vertical strip of paper. They were found inside a book and they were exactly the same length as the book, 28 centimeters long and 5 centimeters wide. This not only makes it look like a bookmark, there is a strong suspicion - said Teio Meedendorp, senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum - that Van Gogh also intended it to be a bookmark.
The three drawings show a woman walking along a row of pollarded willows, a man by a fire and a seated woman. They are all motifs that Van Gogh repeated, refined and painted later in his life.
The drawings made in pencil are part of the exhibition 'Unprecedented. 10 years of extraordinary acquisitions and their stories' at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. On view through September 12.
