Unknown Van Gogh drawing will be presented at an exhibition in Bremen Automatic translate

BREAST. An unknown sketch of Van Gogh was discovered in an album of drawings by his friend, the French artist Emile Bernard (Emile Bernard, 1868-1941). The sketch is valuable in that very few Van Gogh images are known to date, apart from his own self-portraits. The sketch will be presented to the general public at the upcoming exhibition "Emile Bernard: on the pulse of modernity" in Kunsthalle, in Bremen.

Bernard sketched Van Gogh in a Paris cafe, probably in Montmartre. The artist drinks with two women, most likely prostitutes. Van Gogh is depicted with a short beard and mustache. The most noticeable part of the drawing can be called the piercing eyes of the artist. The sketch has traits of spontaneity, it is assumed that Bernard made a sketch between the case, without planning it.

In front of Van Gogh two bottles are shown, apparently wine (it is quite possible that one bottle is from absinthe and the second is from under water, although it is usually served in a decanter). The Dutchman seems to be clutching a glass. Soon after his departure to Arles, Vincent wrote to Theo’s brother: “I feel better than in Paris, and if my stomach became terribly weak, then the problem is probably that I drank too much bad wine.”

Van Gogh met Bernard in Paris, in the workshop of Fernand Cormon, where they studied in March 1886. They became close friends, often painted together and participated in the bohemian nightlife of the city. Kunsthalle curator Dorothee Hansen dates the sketch in the winter of 1886-87. She points out that although Bernard portrayed the artist in a light-hearted atmosphere, surrounded by temptations - women and bottles, it does not seem that Van Gogh is interested in what is happening, looking intently at Bernard who painted him.

For a long time, the drawing lay in the museum’s storehouse in Bremen, along with other personal papers of Emil Bernard, and is only now properly examined. According to experts, there is no doubt that it depicts exactly Vincent Van Gogh.

Although Van Gogh painted over 30 self-portraits, there is not a single adult photograph of him and only half a dozen lifetime portraits painted by other artists: Toulouse-Lautrec, Australian artist John Russell, Lucien Pissarro, the English artist Horace Livens and the Scotsman Archibald Hartrick, who probably made the very last portrait of Van Gogh, in the 1930s.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru