A drawing newly attributed to Vincent van Gogh that has never been displayed publicly before is going on show at the Amsterdam museum that bears the Dutch master’s name, Report informs referring to ABC.
The “new” Van Gogh, “Study for ‘Worn Out,’” from November 1882, is part of a Dutch private collection and was known to only a handful of people, including a few from the Van Gogh Museum. It shows an elderly, balding man sitting, hunched forwards, on a wooden chair, his balding head in his hands.
Even the model’s pants appear to conform to the English title - a patch is clearly visible on the right leg. It illustrates how as a young artist in practicing his craft in The Hague in 1882, Van Gogh had to confront an uncomfortable truth.
“It’s quite rare for a new work to be attributed to Van Gogh,” the museum’s director Emilie Gordenker said in a statement. “We’re proud to be able to share this early drawing and its story with our visitors.”
From the style to the materials used - a thick carpenter’s pencil and coarse watercolor paper - it conforms to Van Gogh’s Hague drawings, Senior Researcher Teio Meedendorp said.
There are even traces of damage on the back linking it to the way Van Gogh used wads of starch to attach sheets of paper to drawing boards. It comes from a time in the artist’s career when he was working to improve his skills as a painter of people and portraits by drawing them. Over and over again.