Plaster Cast of a Woman's Torso

In early March 1886, soon after reaching Paris, Van Gogh joined Fernand Cormon's open studio on the boulevard de Clichy, where students drew from casts of classical sculpture and worked from hired models. He lasted a few months. What stayed with him was the practice and a handful of small plaster casts, kept in the apartment he shared with his brother in the rue Lepic, up on Montmartre. A cast charges no fee and holds its pose, which counted for something when money was short. This one is a reduced copy of an antique Venus, and he painted it around February and March 1887, in the middle of his experiments with the brighter colour of the Paris painters. He set the same figure up more than once. The Van Gogh Museum holds several canvases of this one small plaster torso.