AMSTERDAM - He is best known to art enthusiasts the world over for his vivid colours and tortured swirls of oil paint, but a new show in The Netherlands reveals Vincent Van Gogh as having also been a master in black, white and shades of grey.
Just opened at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, and running until September 18, an exhibition of the Dutch impressionist's sketch books reveals a lot of the method behind the madness of the better-known paintings.
The show, based the four sketch books that have survived plus a number of Van Gogh's water colours and letters, also reveals the artist as a studious, methodical worker, often drawing lines of linear perspective to guide his hand and engaging in systematic research.
Many of Van Gogh's best loved works, such as "The Yellow House," "The Langlois Bridge" or "Bedroom at Arles" are seen going through various stages of development, as pen or brush sketches.
The visitor can also follow Van Gogh's development, from early scholasticism in The Netherlands, notably in the countryside around his father's home town of Neunen, through to the explosion of talent of his time in France, notably at Arles in the south and then Auvers sur Oise near Paris.
One work, later to become "Fishing boats on the beach," is revealed to have been initially sketched at its location -- Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer on the Mediterranean coast near Arles -- with Van Gogh using his reed pen to note which colours he wanted to use.
The exhibition, entitled "Van Gogh Draughtsman: the Masterpieces" was created in liaison with New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The show is due to move to that institution from October 11 to December 31.
Tickets cost 13.50 euros (16 dollars)for adults, or a reduced price of six euros for children aged 12-17, and 3.50 for those under 12. More information can be found on the Amsterdam Museum's web site, at www.vangoghmuseum.com.
07/04/2005 15:45 GMT