Portrait of Paul-Eugène Milliet
 Van Gogh's Portrait of a Peasant from the Norton Simon, An Introduction to the Exhibition, Frick Collection
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Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh’s portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and van Gogh’s own relationship with them.
Vincent van Gogh painted portraits throughout his career from 1881 through 1890.
Van Gogh was fascinated with making portraits early in his artistic career. He wrote to his brother, Theo while studying in The Hague, "I want to do a drawing that not quite everybody will understand, the figure simplified to the essentials, with a deliberate disregard of those details that do not belong to the actual character and are merely accidental." As an example, he discussed having their parents pose for a painting, but that, in capturing the character of a "poor village clergyman" or "a couple who have grown old together in love and fidelity", they may not appreciate the work, because in doing so the painting would not be an exact likeness. Even so, he considered it a "serious matter" to focus on their character, one where his approach should be trusted.
Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in November 1882 that he had drawn a portrait of Jozef Blok (F993), a street bookseller who was sometimes called "Binnenhof's outdoor librarian". Unlike the character studies, the work was detailed in pencil with watercolor and chalk. At this time it was rare for Van Gogh to use color, as he found it difficult to work with (see early works of Vincent van Gogh).
Portrait of Jozef Blok (bookseller), watercolor, 1882, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F993)
In November 1882 Van Gogh began drawings of individuals to depict a range of character types from the working class. The "peasant genre" that greatly influenced Van Gogh began in the 1840s with the works of Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton, and others. In 1885 Van Gogh described the painting of peasants as the most essential contribution to modern art.
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