Vincent at NGA

 Today I went and looked at the National Gallery of Art's excellent web site and found some of the Vincent Van Gogh paintings and drawings in their collection. They have a free download of thousands of works in their collection to be shared and used by everyone. I thought it would be fun to post some of my favorites here.

Yesterday I posted one of Vincent's self portraits that I photographed a few years ago but it was out of focus. Now you can see what it really looks like here. Or go to the NGA website to see where these are in the collection and many other wonders of our national treasures. 

 Vincent loved drawing and painting people but he was so antisocial that he always had to pay his sitters for the privilege of doing his work. In this one of the "orphan old man" the guy lived in a home for old folks who had no family. This guy was deaf and mute I believe and did the modeling for Vincent in the Hague in Netherlands when he was trying to learn to draw figures.

His pen and landscape ink drawings are remarkable for all the tiny little spots and dots and dashes he drew with hours of repetition to indicate slight changes in texture, they were normally large drawings. The show I attended in NYC at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was an amazing experience to see so many of them together. I would love to see that show again and again. It is still vivid memory seven years later. I may have have been influenced to use more brown ink after seeing that show in my daily sketches. Maybe I should go look for their great catalog they printed and buy it to study.