Vincent Van Gogh ‘Bookmark’ He Designed As A Gift Goes On View For First Time
Image via Martien van Gaalen / Shutterstock.com
A never-before-seen artwork by Vincent van Gogh is now on display at the Here to Stay exhibition in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. Unlike most of the Post-Impressionist artist’s paintings, however, this one fits best inside a book.
The pencil sketches, revealed exclusively to The Art Newspaper, were discovered in a novel about peasantry and drawn across a narrow strip of paper of the same height as the book.
Considering the artwork’s focus on peasants, along with where it was found and its exact dimensions, the museum has reason to believe that it was intended as a bookmark. “It would be curious to draw three sketches in this configuration unless there was a reason, and it fits snugly inside the book in which it was found,” senior researcher Teio Meedendorp told the publication.
It has been surmised that the illustrations were made in Etten-Leur, France in 1881, around the time Van Gogh had just made an artistic debut. He sent the book, entitled Histoire d’un Paysan, and bookmark to a friend in 1883, and the materials had remained in the family until they sold them to the museum in 2019.
You can view the strip, which will be on exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until September 12, over at The Art Newspaper.
Top five this week | A once-in-a-decade discovery: we reveal a drawing by Vincent, found hidden in a book @vangoghmuseum https://t.co/cchgoXeXRR
— The Art Newspaper (@TheArtNewspaper) June 27, 2021
[via NL Times and The Art Newspaper, cover image via Martien van Gaalen / Shutterstock.com]
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