Room of Beauty

Image the silence, the peace of yore!

This time I write to you from the far corners of Drenthe, where I have set foot after an endless journey on a barge through the heath. To justly describe the countryside would be an impossible task, as words fail me. But just imagine the banks of the canal as miles and miles of, let’s say, Michels or Th. Rousseaus, Van Goyens or Ph. de Konincks. 


But Theo, the beauty here is indescribable. It is yet impossible to see from my studies. To express what it’s truly like here, I still have a lot to learn, and it is also a matter of time.

The countryside is superb, superb! Everything calls out to you: paint! So genuine and so diverse.

Behold a few night-time effects – I am still working on that weed burner, the tone of which I was able to capture more successfully than before in a painted study, in such a way that it highlights the vastness of the plain and the nightfall, with the small fire and its wisp of smoke as the only source of light. I would look for it each night, and one gloomy evening after the rain, I found the cottage looking wonderful in nature.

Today I followed the ploughmen working a potato field, and the women who accompanied them to pick up any remaining potatoes. 


It is truly stunning here, and I believe I am actually improving my painting as I paint. 

The ride into the village was just so lovely... 
...the meandering outlines of curious and immense drawbridges silhouetted against the teeming evening sky. Such a village at night, with the illuminated windows reflected in the water or in mud and puddles, can occasionally be quite charming. 

I have since created both a large painted study and a large drawing study of a drawbridge, and even a second painted one, using a different effect. I hope to use them as soon as we get snow, to master the effect of snow more accurately – using these same outlines, that is. 

How I wish we could wander here together – and paint together. – I believe the countryside would enchant and captivate you. 

I believe I have found my patch of land.

This is a tactile object. You may touch it.

In front of you lies a landscape: a touchable 3-D model of the landscape as it is depicted in Willem Roelofs’ painting ‘Hunebed near Tynaarlo’, which is on display on the wall on your right. Roelofs painted it with oil paint on canvas, in 1861. The original painting is 92 centimetres wide and 37 centimetres high. This scale model is a bird’s eye view of what can be seen in the painting. Explore the model of the painting with your hands while listening to this audio.

Two-thirds of the painting is occupied by the sky: grey, threatening, with a hesitant sun shining through the clouds in the distance. Below the horizon, there is a flat heath with low bushes painted in shades of purple and green, with in the foreground a few spots where the sandy soil is visible. Just right of the centre there is a structure of huge boulders: a dolmen – or hunebed in Dutch. On top there are three large, horizontal so-called capstones. On the leftmost capstone, there is a silhouette of a man, sitting with his torso slightly bent forward, looking out over the moor. 

To the left of the hunebed, there are just over ten sheep in four small groups, grazing. The man on the dolmen could well be their shepherd.

It’s precisely that one man and the vast emptiness around him that makes the sheer size of the hunebed look so impressive. The way it stands out in the landscape is truly monumental – whereas in reality the hunebed of Tynaarlo is actually one of the smallest in the Netherlands.

 

This is a core object. You can listen to information here. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to touch this object.

In front of you hangs an oil painting that is 37 centimetres high and 51 centimetres wide. It was painted by Vincent van Gogh in October 1853 on canvas, fixed to a panel. The painting’s title is The Peat Barge. It has many natural colours. At the centre is a dark brown peat barge on the water. It’s almost as wide as the painting. On the barge stands a white woman. She’s wearing a black skirt. Her upper clothing is red.

The woman leans forward slightly towards the enormous pile of peat blocks that takes up about two-thirds of the barge. If she stood upright, she would just be able to see over the pile. A plank leads from the top of the peat to the higher bank on the left. On the bank is a path that runs horizontally from left to right. A branch of the path leads upwards, further into the painting. A white man with a wheelbarrow is walking on the path towards the plank. On the left on the horizon is a sapling and on the right in the distance are the outlines of a hut with two dark brown piles of peat in front of it. The sky is dull and grey. The painting has few details.

Van Gogh painted The Peat Barge quickly, with a broad brush and a palette knife. He began with the cream-colored underlayer and then added figures. Followed by the land with the piles of peat and the little building that looks like a sod house. Lastly, he added the sky. Van Gogh was satisfied. He wrote in a letter: ‘As I paint, I believe I am learning to paint a little better.’ In Drenthe he realised that his calling was to become an artist.