Van Gogh revisited (10)

This is the tenth in a series on Vincent van Gogh’s works that are featured as part of the works on display at an exhibition titled “Van Gogh in Paris: a Dialogue with Modernism” at Seoul Arts Center. ― ED.

Vincent van Gogh became acquainted with French painters Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard in the winters of 1886 and 1887. He followed their example by trying to find more modern solutions to his artistic problems. Van Gogh started painting with thin paint, but his art lost some of its roughness and temperament and gained light and also color after he started using stronger pigments.

A typical example of his new style is the 1887 painting “Cafe Table with Absinthe,” done with oil on canvas, which is from the collection of the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. Both the table in the foreground and the street in the background are in pale, watery colors, against which the front of the cafe and the window mullions stands out in the middle ground.