Did Van Gogh make chalk drawings?

Yes, thanks to his mother who once gave him large pieces of chalk Vincent van Gogh made beautiful chalk drawings. He was impressed by the beauty if its color. Vincent van Gogh, known for his use of bright colors in heavily impasted oil paintings in the South of France loved the blackness of chalk in his drawings just a few years before in The Hague.. He followed his dreams and experience a transformation.

Today 139 years ago, on 5 March 1883,

Vincent van Gogh wrote to Anthon van Rappard from The Hague:

"Now another thing — do you know natural chalk? Last year I was given a few large pieces by my brother, this size, no less. I worked with it but didn’t pay it much attention and forgot about it. Now lately I found a piece again and I was struck by how beautiful its colour was, its blackness. Yesterday I did a drawing with it, women and children at a hatch at the public kitchen where soup is sold. And I must tell you that this experiment pleased me very much indeed.”

Soup distribution in a public soup kitchen
The Hague, 1883
Natural black chalk, brush and black paint, opaque white watercolour, scratched, traces of squaring
56,5 x 44,4 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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Van Gogh's 'Soup distribution in a public soup kitchen'

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