In the early 1880s
Vincent van Gogh decides - against all the odds -
to become an artist,
and just like many modern artists in those days,
he often draws and paints landscapes outdoors,
“en plein air”, on the spot.
But unlike most of his fellow artists -
as we can see in this movie
with the actor John Simm as Vincent - 
he uses a stringed wooden frame
through which he looks at his motif:
the scene he is painting.
But why does he do that?
This is one of the early serious attempts by Van Gogh
to depict a landscape.
At that time he lived with his parents in Etten
in southern Netherlands.
The pen drawing shows a “Marsh with Water Lilies”
located some five kilometers from Etten. 
He draws there together with his friend and mentor,
Anthon van Rappard.
Although he was five years younger than Van Gogh,
he had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Amsterdam and in Brussels.
To his brother Theo, Vincent writes:
“We went on a fair number of excursions together (…).
While he was painting
I made a pen drawing of another spot in the marsh
where many water lilies grow.”
Van Rappard’s painted study is not known,
but this is his drawing of the swamp near Etten.
Van Gogh appreciated him, amongst other reasons,
for his social engagement.
In the insert a photograph of Van Rappard.
Particularly after Van Rappard’s blunt but sincere criticism
of a preliminary study of Vincent’s famous 1885 painting
“The Potato Eaters”, their relations cooled.
However, after Van Gogh’s death in 1890,
Van Rappard wrote to Van Gogh’s mother:
“Vincent’s characteristic figure will appear to me
in a melancholy but clear light:
the industrious and struggling,
fanatically-somber Vincent,
who could so often ignite and become fierce,
but who always commanded friendship and admiration
through his noble, his highly artistic qualities.”
In the fall of that year, after Van Rappard’s visit,
in a letter Van Gogh asks him if he can keep the manual
Van Rappard lend to him a little longer.
This concise manual intended for private study by Karl Robert
was titled “Charcoal Drawing without a Master:
Practical and Comprehensive Treaty on the Study
of the Landscape in Charcoal.”
Van Gogh writes:
“It’s because, working with charcoal now,
I still need it so much, but if I go to The Hague
I’ll see to it that I get one myself.”
When he moved to his parents' house in Etten,
he applied himself wholeheartedly to a self-designed program
of instruction focused on drawing
and the study of artists' books
on technique, anatomy, and perspective.
Van Gogh believed that drawing was "the root of everything”,
and the time spent on that was for him “actually all profit.”
The print we see here is by Auguste Allongé
and belongs to the fourth lesson of Robert’s manual
treating the detail in foregrounds of drawings.
Van Gogh must have loved this image,
pollard trees were among his favorite motifs.
A year later he made in The Hague
a watercolor after a similar motif
of a willow drooping over the water.
He writes:
“I saw a dead pollard willow there (…).
It hung over a pond with reeds, all alone and melancholy,
and its bark was scaled and mossy, as it were,
and spotted and marbled in various tones —
something like the skin of a snake, greenish, yellowish,
mostly dull black,
with white flaking spots and stumpy branches.
I’m going to attack it tomorrow morning.”
Four days later he writes:
“I’ve attacked that old giant of a pollard willow,
and I believe it has turned out the best of the watercolors.”
Van Gogh produced his first large, fully-fledged watercolors
in The Hague.
But already in Etten he made several drawings outdoors
of his beloved trees,
like this landscape “Road in Etten with Pollard Willows
and Man with Broom.”
To Van Rappard he writes:
“You know what’s absolutely beautiful these days,
the road to the station (…) with the old pollard willows (…)
I can’t tell you how beautiful those trees are now.
Made around 7 large studies of several of the trunks.”
Compared to the earlier shown pen drawing
“Marsh with Water Lilies”,
the road with pollard willows – drawn in the same year
and with an under drawing in pen and ink –
is technically far more advanced.
When he is in The Hague,
Van Gogh explains this in a letter to his brother,
on December 10, 1882:
“Today I worked on old drawings from Etten,
because I saw the pollard willows again
in a similar leafless state here in the field,
and what I had seen last year came to mind again.
Sometimes I long so much to do landscape,
just as one would for a long walk to refresh oneself,
and in all of nature, in trees for instance,
I see expression and a soul, as it were.
A row of pollard willows
sometimes resembles a procession of orphan men.”
In this drawing the largely self-taught Van Gogh
seems to have difficulty
with the diminution of receding figures.
The figure in the middle with the walking stick
seems somewhat too large.
In several of his letters he mentions the difficulty
of the application of perspective rules.
At the start of his artistic career, in 1880, he writes:
“There are laws of proportion, of light and shadow,
of perspective,
that one must know
in order to be able to draw anything at all.
If one lacks that knowledge,
it will always remain a fruitless struggle
and one will never give birth to anything.”
According to Van Gogh himself he did this watercolor
“Bleaching Ground at Scheveningen” on the spot in one go,
entirely in wash almost without preparation,
on a very coarse piece of linen structure.
Notice again the peculiar recession of the figures,
the man in front seems much smaller 
than the woman in the center.
In his small letter sketch after the watercolor
the discrepancy in the height of both figures is diminished.
It is typical for Van Gogh that he always assiduously tried
to carry the practice of his art to a higher state of perfection.
In that endeavor he didn’t eschewed
the use of drawing devices.
In his Dutch years he made numerous charcoal studies
of local peasants and laborers,
often performing routine, humble tasks.
So when he heard that the use of a manikin -
a lay figure with movable limbs -
could improve his drawing of figures,
he wanted to work with such a device. 
In 1881 he writes to Theo:
“Now you write about a manikin.
There’s no particular hurry,
but it would be of great use to me
in composing and finding poses,
you’re sensible of that.
However, I’d rather wait a bit longer and have a better one
than have a tool sooner that was far too inadequate.”
(The manikin in the insert is a French or English, 19th century
carved wooden, pine artists articulated exemplar.)
And he continues:
“Be sure and keep an eye out, though,
for all manner of prints or books about proportion,
and find out as much as you can about them,
that’s of inestimable value,
without it one can’t make a figure drawing quickly.”
And in the artists’ books
Van Gogh found a solution
for his struggle with the perspective rules.
He designs a drawing device
which “makes it possible
to compare the proportions of objects close at hand
with those on a plane further away,
in cases where construction
according to the rules of perspective
isn’t feasible.”
The origins of this “perspective frame”
can be traced back to 15th century Renaissance.
This is a plaque in bronze,
representing a self-portrait
of the Renaissance theorist and architect,
Leon Battista Alberti.
He is clothed as an ancient Roman.
To the left of his profile is his emblem:
a winged eye.
For Alberti
the eye is the most powerful part of the human body.
In his treatise on painting in 1435,
he wrote that paintings
should resemble a transparent window.
A painting should give the viewer the illusion
that he is looking outside a window frame at an actual scene.
According to Alberti
an artist should imitate the beauty of nature.
But he did not mean
that an artist should imitate nature objectively,
as it is, but he should be especially attentive to beauty,
the harmony of all parts in relation to one another.
Centuries earlier, this recommendation was pursued
in the “Odyssey Landscapes” series.
These landscapes are a clear example
of the Second style of Roman wall painting,
also called the “Illusionistic Style”,
in which painted architectural elements -
the red columns on the left and right -
are added to the composition,
turning the paintings into "windows" to a naturalistic world.
This painting shows a scene from Homer’s Odyssey:
“The Laestrygonians”,
cannibal people living in the region of Mount Aetna in Sicily,
destroying Odysseus’ fleet.
Despite the fact that the Roman artists
were unfamiliar with linear perspective,
the sense of depth is in this picture is remarkable.
The dark, distant ships are drawn smaller
than the two ships near the coast.
The ship in front occludes part of the ship behind.
Aerial perspective is used,
colors are faded on those parts of the composition
farther away from the observer,
the brown and golden colors of the distinct rocks
in the foreground
turn to silvery gray of the indistinct cliff in the distance.
The shading of the rocks
strengthens a three-dimensional impression.
In addition, foreshortening is used
in the depiction op the ship on the right,
and the rock at the right border of the painting
serves as repoussoir.
Indeed, Roman artists looked closely at nature.
They even noticed
that a blue sky is whiter near the horizon than at the zenith.
This whitening at the horizon is visible on the wall painting
All these techniques of depth illusion
in this early Roman mural
are apparently well established,
and show that indeed Renaissance painting could elaborate
on the three-dimensionality in the visual art of the classics.
The discovery of the theory of one-point linear perspective
in the beginnings of the 15th century is generally attributed
to Filippo Brunelleschi,
the engineer of the dome of the Florence Cathedral.
He showed that the use of linear perspective
tremendously improved the illusion
of three-dimensionality in a picture.
Giving credit to Filippo Brunelleschi
in the Italian preface of his book
“La Pictura” (On Painting),
Alberti was the first in history to write scientific studies
on linear or mathematical perspective,
which marks a turning point
in the development of naturalistic representation.
Leonardo Da Vinci, who was influenced by Alberti
and who shared Alberti’s idea to consider painting
as the construction of an image that resembles a window,
designed this drawing device that could transfer
the reality of the three-dimensional, visual world
to the two-dimensional, flat picture plane.
This so-called “Perspectograph”
was comprised of a pane of glass
that fits into a frame
and which also held a small viewing slot.
The framed glass, in fact the literal window on the world,
could be placed in front of the scene to be painted
with the proper linear perspective.
The artist could look through the viewing slot with one eye
and then could trace the outline of the object
direct on the window glass.
The outline served as a rough sketch for the final,
well defined painting.
This sketch of a perspectograph is made by Albrecht Dürer,
probably after Leonardo.
This engraving by Dürer shows the aid in use
by an artist drawing a seated man.
He is tracing the outline of the sitter direct on the window glass.
The drawing on the glass is only possible
if the eye of the artist is fixed.
He therefore looks through a stabilized peephole,
comparable to the lens of a camera.
The word “perspective” comes from the Latin “perspicere”
meaning “to look through”.
A painting with a correct perspective
is like a window on the outside world.
Such a painting gives the viewer the illusion
that he is looking through a window,
a hole in the wall, through which the viewer can gaze. 
It was during his second visit to Italy in 1506,
that Dürer learned about “the secret art of perspective”.
before an open window through which we see a lake
in front of distant snow-capped mountains.
The placement of the sitter
in the narrow confines of an interior,
with a small window offering the partial view
of a distant landscape
is typical an arrangement of North European portrait-painting,
and is adopted by many Italian Renaissance portraitists.
We see here a typical example by the Italian artist
Lorenzo Lotto: “Portrait of a Gentleman”.
Allegedly, this 15th century painting by Filippo Lippi,
“Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement”,
is the first Italian portrait
with in the background a landscape seen through a window.
It is also the first double portrait in Italian art.
Interestingly, this painting also points at an alternative
to Leonardo’s perspectograph.
For the sharply defined shadow cast by the male sitter
onto the back wall, makes it possible
to trace the outlines of his face,
resulting in a sketch of the sitter’s profile.
It was the ancient Roman author Pliny who suggested
that the origin of painting lies in this tracing of cast shadows.
He tells the charming story of Butades of Corinth
who made the discovery by seeing his daughter
tracing the outline of her lover's shadow
as thrown upon the wall by the light of a candle,
so she had his portrait before he went into battle.
The 18th century Scottish painter David Allan
made this illustration of the story.
Inspired by Alberti and Leonardo,
Dürer devised several “drawing machines”.
The most broadly used device is this perspective frame
from which we see here a preparatory drawing by Dürer.
He found this device more practical than using a glass pane.
The apparatus is made up of a square wooden frame,
across which horizontal and vertical strong black threads
are stretched at regular intervals to form a quadrangular grid.
The drafsman is observing the male nude
in a foreshortened pose through this grid,
subdividing the picture plane in squares
which serve as reference areas 
to be reproduced on a drawing surface
with the same number of squares.
Although this is not the case in Dürer’s sketch.
Notice further the device to keep head and eye fixed.
This well-known woodcut
of a “Draftsman Drawing a Reclining Woman”
is Dürer’s final illustration of the perspective frame
which is included in the 2nd edition of his Painters Manual.
Here, the artist uses an obelisk just in front of his right eye,
to keep the eye steady to enforce
the proportional correspondence
between the scene and drawing.
In this woodcut, indeed the number of squares 
of frame and drawing sheet seems equal.
More than three centuries after Dürer
the frame appeared to be still in use.
This is a drawing by Vincent van Gogh
in a letter to his brother Theo,
showing how he used such a device.
The frame could be attached to adjustable notches
on two wooden poles
staked into the ground for outdoor sightings.
Van Gogh would view his subject through the frame at eye level,
and on his blank sheet of drawing paper or canvas
would sketch the lines that correspond 
to the threads and edges of the wooden frame.
These lines can be traced in several of Van Gogh's paintings
made in Paris.
This “Self portrait as a Painter”
was the last work he created in Paris
before he went to the south of France.
It is greatly inspired by impressionist painting technique
which he saw in the capital of France.
The seven paintbrushes in his left hand
may reveal something of his working method.
In the Netherlands, with help of a blacksmith and a carpenter,
Van Gogh constructed this oblong wooden frame,
strung with lengths of thread into the pattern of a Union Jack.
Looking through it like a window,
the artist trains himself
to compare the proportion of objects nearby
with those on a more distant plane,
while the intersection of the threads
presses the eye to its point of convergence
at the vanishing point.
In this way Van Gogh was able to create
a perspective correct image of the landscape:
a window on the natural world.
To his brother he writes
that the depiction of a landscape only by eye
“will always come out wrong,
unless you’re very experienced and skilled.”
Of course, when working in the open air
the problem is to keep your eye at a fixed position.
The aligning of the frame’s horizontal thread with the horizon
with the intersection of the threads
on a certain location on the horizon as vanishing point,
the eye can be held more or less in a fixed position
with respect to the frame.
This is a modern version of Van Gogh's frame.
Van Gogh’s idea of the frame
probably came from studying painters manuals,
in particular those written by Armand Cassagne,
a French Barbizon artist,
who encouraged the use of those frames
when painting after nature.
An image of the frame can already be found
on the title page of one of his books.
And the first illustration of the book
shows the iron gate of a farm
that could serve as a “natural cadre”
for an artist practicing drawing a distant tower.
Van Gogh made several designs
of the frame’s form and operation.
This sketch of siting a tower with some color indications,
is made in his first sketchbook when he stayed in Nuenen
with his parents who had moved to this village.
In the same “Nuenen Sketchbook”
is this drawing of an artist
using a standing version of the frame.
This is a photograph of the Nuenen sketchbook.
There are in total seven of his pocket-size sketchbooks
at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam,
but only four with their original covers.
Van Gogh painted the house of his parents in Nuenen,
a vicarage, where he had his studio.
His father was a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Community.
On the right a recent photograph of the house.
During a significant part of his career
Van Gogh frequently used his perspective frame,
which he called his “little window”.
Even in the last year of his life
he made a sketch of a “Head of a Man with a Hat”
with a perspective frame on the bottom right.
Notice, the frame is drawn in a vertical position.
The consequence of his reliance on the little window
was that many of his drawings and paintings are
so-called “framed landscapes”
with a single vanishing point.
The flanking trees in this drawing of a
“Flower Nursery on the Schenkweg in The Hague”
serve as a natural cadre
guiding the viewer’s eye into the distance.
This drawing is part of a series of cityscapes of The Hague,
primarily intended
as an exercise in perspective and proportion.
At that time he mentions to his brother
his interest in engravings
of the French artist Charles Méryon,
the "Piranesi of France".
This is one of them
showing “The Little Bridge” across the Seine in Paris,
with the spires of the Notre-Dame church above the rooftops.
Also made in The Hague is this watercolor showing
in strict one-point perspective
a view from his attic window.
In a letter to his brother he describes the painting:
“…only now there is also: color —
the gentle green of the meadow contrasting
with the red tiled roof,
the light in the sky set off by the matt tones of the foreground,
a yard with earth and damp wood.”
The next letter includes this sketch after the watercolor.
The carpenter who helped him with the construction of the frame
was his neighbor.
He is perhaps the man we see working in the yard.
In 1886 Van Gogh moved from Antwerp to Paris,
taking along his little window.
There he painted these views of Paris
from Theo’s apartment,
with in the center of both pictures,
on the horizon the spires of the Church of Notre-Dame.
Infrared analyses
by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam revealed
that he indeed used his perspective frame for this painting.
Vaguely we can see the under drawing,
consisting of the outer and inner edges
as well as the verticals, horizontals
and diagonals of the frame.
Van Gogh placed the frame directly on the primed canvas
and then outlined its contours in pencil.
The horizontal string of the frame is aligned with the horizon,
and the Notre-Dame serves as vanishing point.
The influence of impressionism is notable in this painting:
Van Gogh adapted the stippling technique,
using tiny dots in areas where needed for detail
and brush strokes for the background.
On the left a “View from Vincent’s Studio”
which he painted shortly after his arrival in Paris.
The difference between both pictures is evident.
His early view is painted in his Dutch style with dark colors,
subdued browns and grays
for the walls and roofs of the houses.
On the left a pen and ink drawing of seemingly
the same view from Theo’s apartment.
However, in the drawing
the Notre Dame is not in the center of the picture.
The cathedral is possibly the building
with two spires on the horizon
beside the apartment complex on the left.
It seems plausibe that Vincent
made the drawing from another window of Theo’s apartment,
left of the window
from which he painted in oil the Parisean view.
This recent photograph is taken from Theo’s apartment.
The view at the distant Notre Dame is now blocked
by the building with the red shutters. 
Also in other paintings made in Paris,
the traced contours of a perspective frame are found,
like in this painting: “Montmartre, Mills and Allotments”.
Contrary to the popular belief
that Van Gogh had only one frame,
it is now suggested
that he possessed several in different sizes.
In late February of 1888 he took his frame (or frames)
with him from Paris to Arles in the South of France,
using it there notably in his series of paintings:
The Langlois Bridge at Arles,
named after its bridge keeper: Langlois.
Such drawbridges on a canal reminded him of his homeland.
He asked his brother to frame and send one of the paintings
to an art dealer in the Netherlands.
It was in Arles where his artistic breakthrough took place.
He painted with impasto, or thickly applied paint,
using bright colors to depict the reflection of light.
Infrared analysis showed that he has outlined the contours
of a perspective frame lying on the canvas.
The lower edge of the frame was placed in the center
of the lower edge of the canvas.
The horizontal string of the frame was aligned with
the boundary between the bridge wall and the sky.
The dimensions of the frame are 45 by 50 cm.
So Van Gogh, standing in front of the bridge,
started with a blank, primed canvas.
In pencil he traced the contours and strings
of the perspective frame.
Then, also in pencil, Van Gogh draws sketchily
the contours of the bridge and canal.
Subsequently, on top of this under drawing,
with reed pen and dark-brown ink,
he made a detailed drawing
of the contours of the individual motifs in the picture.
Stones of the bridge were separately drawn.
In the insert is shown Van Gogh’s separate reed pen drawing
on paper of the same motif.
We used this drawing
to reconstruct the pen drawing for the present picture.
In the final painting, the pen drawing was strongly integrated.
For the carriage horse, for instance,
no paint at all was applied.
The pen drawing is left untouched.
The proof that Van Gogh used a perspective frame
might be taken as a strong indication
that the painting was indeed executed on the spot.
This picture shows the bridge from another vantage point,
with houses of Arles in the background.
Apparently, the midpoint of his frame
was aligned with the church spire,
peeking in the sky in the very center of the bridge.
The photo from 1902 of the Langlois Bridge
seems to be taken from the same direction
as Van Gogh’s viewpoint.
The church spire is indeed visible in the center of the bridge,
indicating that at that time he faithfully painted after nature.
The original bridge was destroyed.
On another location a replica of the bridge was constructed,
named: “Pont Van Gogh”( the Van Gogh Bridge).
Besides his interest in perspective and proportion,
Van Gogh was absorbingly interested in the structure,
function and component parts of craft mechanisms.
The working parts of the drawbridge
are all clearly discernable.
This monochrome oil painting of a “Weaver at the Loom”
viewed from the front,
is another example
of his meticulous depiction of craft mechanisms.
On his series of weavers he writes to his brother:
“I’ll have a lot more hard graft on those looms —
but in reality the things are such almighty beautiful affairs —
all that old oak against a greyish wall —
that I certainly believe it’s right that they should be painted”.
Van Gogh identifies himself with working class people.
He compares his working conditions
with those of craftsmen:
“A weaver, a basket-maker,
often spends entire seasons alone,
or almost alone, with his work as his only pastime”.
In this painting, “A Weaver's Cottage”,
the correspondence of artist and sitter is almost literal.
The artist, looking through his artisan’s tool -
the perspective frame -
paints a weaver who is looking through his tool,
the loom.
Van Gogh must have intentionally
employed this visual metaphor.
Van Gogh doesn’t ignore the hard labor of women of his days
in this “Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing”.
A Dutchman’s depiction a drawbridge in sunny south France.
On the right, Claude Monet’s “Bridge at Amsterdam” –
a Frenchman’s depiction of a drawbridge in rainy Netherlands.
This is the first painting by Monet 
to become part of an American collection.
In Monet’s picture
less care is takenfor correct perspective and proportion.
The diagonal composition is rather conventional,
with the horizon at about half of the picture’s height
(the sky occupies about half of the canvas).
The overlapping of the tower by the bridge
seems not a good idea.
With its high horizon,
Van Gogh’s composition is more daring,
but in his general appearance it seems more academical.
With its intense colors,
structured brush stroke technique,
and extremely high horizon,
this painting by Paul Cézanne,
“Cote du Galet, at Pontoise”,
measures more up to post-impressionist style.
But, as we’ll (hopefully) show in a future video,
Van Gogh’s style of painting
changes dramatically during his stay in Arles.
There he becomes a genuine post-impressionist.
Monet’s main objective
is to depict accurately the gloomy light of a rainy day,
and more than in Van Gogh’s picture,
colors take precedence over lines and contours.
Monet is not interested much in representing
the constructive, operational aspects of the bridge.
The two parallel, wooden beams or girders
suspended off of the wooden arch
seem in a state of unstable balance.
On the bridge are figures with an unfolded umbrella,
indicating that it’s raining.
Of course it is hardly conceivable
that Monet was painting in the rain.
During the last century the wooden bridge –
called the Pepper Bridge -
is replaced by this iron exemplar.
The photographer carefully placed the tower,
the Montauban Tower,
in the center of the photo.
Two years after his “Langlois Bridges”,
after he went through several psychiatric crises,
and a month before his death,
at the height of his career,
Van Gogh made, with his typical constructive brush strokes,
this “Wheatfield with Crows”.
His perspective frame was disposed of,
a three-dimensional illusion was not persued,
his paintings were no longer meant to be
“windows on a real world”.
On large elongated double-square canvases
he turned his emotional sensations with ardent devotion
into intensely colored landscape compositions.
Nineteen days before his death
Van Gogh wrote to his brother and sister-in-law the following: 
“Once back here I set to work again –
the brush however almost falling from my hands, and –
knowing clearly what I wanted -
I’ve painted another three large canvases since then.
They’re immense stretches of wheatfields
under turbulent skies,
and I made a point of trying to express sadness,
extreme loneliness.
You’ll see this soon, I hope – 
for I hope to bring them to you in Paris
as soon as possible,
since I’d almost believe
that these canvases will tell you
what I can’t say in words,
what I consider healthy and fortifying
about the countryside.”
Handshakes in thought.
Ever yours (t. à v.)
