Plaster Cast of a Woman's Torso

Drawing from plaster casts of antique sculpture was the standard drill of an art school, and Van Gogh went through it twice in quick succession, at the academy in Antwerp in the winter of 1885 to 1886 and then in Fernand Cormon's studio in Paris, where an exact, lifelike outline was the whole point. Neither arrangement held him for long. By March 1887 he had casts to hand in the flat on Montmartre and was painting them for his own reasons. The torso here is a small copy of a classical Venus, turned with her back to us. From a few steps away the plaster reads as white, almost porcelain. Close up it is built from thin strokes of green, orange, red and purple that mix in the eye into a warm grey.