Van Gogh’s ‘new’ drawing discovered after a century, on display in Amsterdam museum

A drawing from November 1882, Study for ‘Worn Out,’ has been recently discovered and attributed to Vincent van Gogh. The drawing is part of a Dutch private collection and was known only to very few people, including some from the Van Gogh Museum. The owner, who chooses to remain anonymous, requested the museum to confirm if the unsigned work is by Van Gogh.

The drawing shows an elderly, balding man sitting on a wooden chair with his head in his hands. The model for the drawing appeared regularly in Van Gogh’s works, who drew the bald, elderly man more than forty times. It is a far cry from Gogh’s vibrant oil paintings of varied flowers and lush landscapes. Experts say that it comes from a time in the artist’s career when he was working to improve his skills as a portrait painter. 

“In terms of the materials, too, you find everything you’d expect in a Van Gogh drawing from this period: a thick carpenter’s pencil as medium, coarse watercolour paper as support, and fixing with a solution of water and milk. There are traces of damage in the corners on the back of the drawing, which we can link to the way Van Gogh customarily attached sheets of paper to his drawing board using wads of starch”, Senior Researcher Teio Meedendorp said in a statement.

The museum already owns the almost identical drawing, Worn Out. “It was quite clear that they are related,” Meedendorp added.

Study for ‘Worn Out’ is a preliminary study for the 1882 drawing ‘Worn out’, one of the most 'powerful figure drawings' from Van Gogh’s period in The Hague. The artist had described in detail how the drawing came about in letters to his brother Theo, friend Anthon van Rappard.

“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,” she added.

The drawing that has never been made public before, is on display at the Amsterdam museum till 2 January, 2022.