Art Institute of Chicago

Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars

Vincent van Gogh

Date

March 1884

Medium

Reed pen and iron-gall ink on tan laid paper

Culture

Netherlands

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Vincent van Gogh seems to have been inspired to make this melancholy drawing after reading the poem “Tristement” (sadly) by the French writer François Coppee, who was known as the “poet of the humble.” The poem describes a mourning widow proceeding along “a very long lane of giant, halfdenuded plane trees.” Time has enhanced the drawing’s autumnal mood. The iron-gall ink that Van Gogh used, once black, has altered to a dark brown and imparted a golden tone to the paper, the pen lines bleeding so that close hatchings merge and the contrast between light and dark is now muted.

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