Why didn’t Van Gogh paint nudes?
He was such a loser he couldn’t get women to take off their clothes?
There’s a lot of truth in that. OTTOMH He sold one painting in his life. The woman he fell in love with (and gave a bit of his ear to) was a prostitute.
He didn’t have the money to hire a model. He couldn’t have gotten into a decent art school. He didn’t know any women willing to pose pro bono.
IIRC, Van Gogh’s paintings are mostly the world literally through his eyes- a postman who served as a father figure, the view from the asylum window, people, things and places that he saw in the course of his life. There aren’t a lot of paintings of things that have been chosen specifically for their artistic qualities- like composed still lifes or posed models.
He did all kinds of still lifes – lots of irises, sunflowers, etc. He also did a lot of landscape painting in Arles.
The “coudlnt’ afford to hire a model” theory makes sense though.
I know about the sunflowers. Besides everything else, the museum here in Philly has one of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
I’ll have to look into that. The Van Gogh landscapes I’ve seen always struck me as more ‘I was walking around and this looked pretty cool’ than ‘I shall go out and paint landscapes now’.
I admit that I haven’t ever studied Van Gogh too deeply. After a long list of greats who failed to live up to my image of them, I’m afraid to investigate the rest.
Nude Woman, Reclining, 1887, oil on canvas Painted in Paris, this is one of three paintings of female nudes by van Gogh.@
Damn. And I live, literally, ten minutes from the Barnes.
That’s not a particularly attractive young lady. I’d have stuck with landscapes myself.
She may have been attractive of the time and place. Or attractive to him. But that’s not always the point in paintings. If you ever get a chance to see Van Gogh’s earliest works, there are some damned unattractive people in them.
FWIW, the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is worth flying across the ocean to see.
From what I remember he took to painting later in life and killed himself 10 years later. There’s always this sketch he did of his prostitute lover he lived with Sorrow
That title was an atrocious pun and you should be very ashamed of yourself. 