Books by Sjraar van Heugten
Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)
by Colta Ives, Susan Alyson Stein, Sjraar van Heugten, Marije Vellekoop
Vincent van Gogh (18531890) believed that drawing was the root of everything.” A self-taught artist, he succeeded, between 1881 and 1890, in developing an inimitable graphic style. This book traces the artist’s successive triumphs as a draftsman, first in the Netherlands and later in France, highlighting the diversity of his technical invention and the striking continuity of his vision. Given the pivotal role drawings played in Van Gogh’s artistic conception and the rich dialectic they enjoyed with his oil paintings, a small selection of related canvases by the artist is also featured.This beautiful book presents approximately 120 works in charcoal, ink, graphite, watercolor, and diluted oils. The authors explore enduring questions that surround Van Gogh’s drawings, including their manufacture, artistic precedents, and contribution to Modernism. In addition, the text discusses the significance of the artist’s drawing practice to his development as a painter. The essays and entries feature the most current research on Van Gogh’s drawings and provide fresh interpretations of the motivating influences that shaped the artist’s contributions to the history of drawing.
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Van Gogh and the Seasons
A new look at the ways van Gogh represented the seasons and the natural world throughout his career
The changing seasons captivated Vincent van Gogh (1853–90), who saw in their unending cycle the majesty of nature and the existence of a higher force. Van Gogh and the Seasons is the first book to explore this central aspect of van Gogh's life and work.
Van Gogh often linked the seasons to rural life and labor as men and women worked the land throughout the year. From his depictions of peasants and sowers to winter gardens, riverbanks, orchards, and harvests, he painted scenes that richly evoke the sensory pleasures and deprivations particular to each season. This stunning book brings to life the locales that defined his tumultuous career, from Arles, where he experienced his most crucial period of creativity, to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he committed suicide. It looks at van Gogh's interpretation of nature, the religious implications of the seasons in his time, and how his art was perceived against the backdrop of various symbolist factions, antimaterialist debates, and esoteric beliefs in fin de siècle Paris. The book also features revealing extracts from the artist's correspondence and artworks from his own collection that provide essential context to the themes in his work.
Breathtakingly illustrated and featuring informative essays by Sjraar van Heugten, Joan Greer, and Ted Gott, Van Gogh and the Seasons shines new light on the extraordinary creative vision of one of the world's most beloved artists.
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Van Gogh: The Birth of an Artist
An unprecedented, in-depth exploration of the dawn of Van Gogh’s artistic career
In 1878, at age 25, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) arrived in the area of Belgium known as the Borinage to work as a Protestant evangelist in rural coal mining communities. He failed in that vocation, and after months of soul-searching, in August 1880, he decided to become an artist. This fascinating publication is the first to examine in depth Van Gogh’s time in the Borinage and his artistic development in the following years, when he created his works that in many cases have direct ties with this early period.
Vivid essays tell the story of Van Gogh’s life in the mining communities, and the effect this environment had on his way of thinking and seeing the world. Augmenting the text are letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo from the Borinage, in which he describes his desire to sketch, and drawings that he modeled after prints of masterworks by artists such as Jean-François Millet. Other essays trace Van Gogh’s development as an artist in subsequent years, including his move to Brussels to fully pursue life as an artist. Thought-provoking examinations of works that Van Gogh completed after leaving the Borinage demonstrate how motifs that he developed there—rustic dwellings, laborers, agriculture, nature—became themes that spanned his entire oeuvre.
Distributed for Mercatorfonds and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mons, Belgium
Exhibition Schedule:
Foundation Mons 2015, Belgium
(01/23/15–05/17/15)
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Van Gogh and Nature
by Sjraar van Heugten, Richard Kendall, Chris Stolwijk
A revelatory study of the importance of nature in Van Gogh’s art throughout his life in Holland and France
The celebrated painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) had a lifelong fascination with the natural world. He spent his youth in rural Holland, and the country’s flat landscapes, trees, flowers, and birds would feature in his early art. After he moved to Paris, he encountered new radical thinking about art and humanity’s changing relationship with nature. Later, in Provence and Auvers, he discovered unfamiliar terrain, flora, and fauna that further influenced his artistic ideas and subject matter. Van Gogh’s images of such diverse environments reflect not only his immediate surroundings but also the artist’s evolving engagement with nature and art.
Van Gogh and Nature is an eye-opening and beautifully produced catalogue, which accompanied the best-attended special exhibition in the Clark Art Institute's history. It chronicles the artist’s ongoing relationship with nature throughout his entire career. Among the featured works are Van Gogh’s drawings and paintings, along with related materials that illuminate his reading, sources, and influences. Vivid color photography and explanatory texts based on new research by the authors clarify a central theme of Van Gogh’s oeuvre.
Distributed for the Clark Art Institute
Exhibition Schedule:
Clark Art Institute
(06/14/15–09/13/15)
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