Torso of Venus

Training in the 1880s still began with plaster. Students copied casts of antique sculpture for months before they were allowed near a living model, and Van Gogh had done exactly that at the academy in Antwerp early in 1886, weeks before he moved to Paris. He kept small casts in the studio afterwards, and a reduced copy of a classical Venus was among the ones he used most. He painted that torso five times, turning it to a fresh angle for each attempt. This version is on cardboard rather than canvas, the support he reached for when a picture was a study. It is also the one where the figure has her back to him, the paint loaded on thickly enough to follow the line of the shoulder and the hip.