Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) started his artistic career by concentrating on drawing. Convinced that this was the foundation he needed to become a painter, he did little else for the first three years of his career. He was a talented drauftsman long before he became an experienced painter, and drawing would remain an integral part of all his subsequent artistic activities.Published to accompany an exhibition at the Vincent van Gogh Foundation in Arles,
Van Gogh Drawings
includes more than 30 of the artist's prints and drawings. This volume also pays special attention to the influences that shaped van Gogh's graphic work, and features a range of images that inspired van Gogh at specific points in his practice. These include prints and images from illustrated magazines which van Gogh collected and which strongly influenced his early work, and replicas of 17th-century prints and Japanese prints which inspired his remarkable reed pen drawings made in Provence. Van Gogh absorbed a multitude of influences and merged them in works that were highly innovative in style and often also in technique, producing one of the most remarkable drawn oeuvres of the 19th century.