How Van Gogh’s drawing skills were overshadowed by a 16-year-old girl

A sketchbook recently discovered by 16-year-old Catharina Kam includes a drawing of an elderly woman peeling potatoes, a subject simultaneously addressed by Van Gogh. Catharina and her brothers Jan and Willem knew Vincent well, and together they went on sketching excursions in the Dutch countryside. It was certainly on one of these occasions that both Catharina and Vincent drew the woman.

Catharina’s drawing is reproduced for the first time in the Atlas Van Gogh in Brabant, by Helewise Berger and Ron Dirven, published yesterday (March 30), on the occasion of Vincent’s birthday. It was launched at House of Vincent van Gogh in Zundert, the birthplace of the artist. The profusely illustrated book in Dutch provides details of 46 sites relating to Van Gogh’s life in Brabant, the southern province of the Netherlands near the Belgian border where he was raised and where his parents lived.

Catharina (1865-1955) was the daughter of the Reverend Jan Gerrit Kam (1833-1917), pastor of the village of Leur, adjacent to Etten, where Vincent’s father, Theodorus, held the same role. The two Protestant clerics were colleagues and their children became friends.

Vincent, then 28, lived in Etten from April to December 1881. A year earlier, when he was an evangelist in Belgium’s Borinage coalfield, he realized he was failing in his calling – and he decided to embark on becoming an artist. But his early drawing efforts were rudimentary, and he found it difficult.

Catharina’s older brother, Jan Benjamin (1860-1932), later recalled that at Etten-Leur Van Gogh drew the local peasants. In 1912, Jan wrote to the critic Albert Plasschaert: “He then drew sowers and entered small dwellings to draw the woman doing household chores.

Both Vincent and Catharina’s sketches show the same woman in her country house, sitting and preparing potatoes next to a window. Although the compositions are very similar, the woman is depicted from slightly different angles, with Catherina apparently positioned while drawing just to the left of Vincent.

The different angles mean that one drawing is not simply a copy of the other, and both must have been drawn from nature. We can date the occasion, since Vincent wrote to his brother Theo in mid-September 1881 that he was drawing “a woman in a white cap peeling potatoes”. Vincent also seems to have done another little sketch on the same occasion, but the one pictured above with Catharina’s drawing seems to have been the most considered.

The identity of the woman, wearing a traditional white bonnet and wooden clogs, remains unknown. Van Gogh included a view from his window of a row of pollard willows, but this is probably an imaginary landscape typical of the region, not what could actually be seen from inside his hut . Catharina only vaguely indicated the window, leaving more emphasis on the figure.

The wooden bucket occupies different positions in the two drawings, so either Vincent or Catharina may have moved it to improve their composition. Vincent added a bit of watercolor to his drawing, blue and red on the woman’s clothes and red to indicate the dark interior of the bucket. Catharina also included a white cloth or apron on the woman’s lap.

What is striking is that Van Gogh had great difficulty in dealing with the perspective of the chair: the lower front rails appear to be almost a continuation of the side ones, rather than being depicted more or less at an angle . He also made the woman’s upper leg far too long compared to the rest of her body.

Catharina captured perspective and proportion more successfully, although both made the head look rather small. Its design also reflects more the woman’s concentration on her task.

So, in 1881, was the young Catharina a better artist?

Dirven points out that she was “well educated and had a remarkable command of drawing techniques”. Catharina was “more academically schooled, while Vincent focused more on expression, disliking an academic approach”. But from a technical point of view, it was much more advanced.

At the time, Vincent confessed to his brother Theo that he had a lot to learn, although he was making progress. In the same letter about the potato peeler, he adds: “What seemed hopelessly impossible to me is now gradually becoming possible, thank God… Diggers, sowers, ploughmen, men and women that I now have to draw constantly. Examine and draw everything that is part of a peasant’s life.

A month after the drawing session with Catharina, Vincent made a much more accomplished watercolor, placing the woman on a dark background. This time he avoided the perspective problems of the depiction of the chair, omitting the front crosspieces (they are partially obscured by the woman’s dress). He also moved the bucket to the foreground, seemingly following Catharina’s lead.

After his first efforts at Etten, Van Gogh’s progress was rapid. In a few years, he mastered perspective. He became so proficient that he sometimes deliberately flouted the laws of perspective, for effect. This can be seen in his evocative painting of Bedroom (October 1888), completed only six years after his hesitant Etten drawings.

Coincidentally, the only image that seems to have survived of Catharina from around the time she knew Van Gogh is a watercolor that shows her in a pose quite similar to the elderly woman. Catharina steps on a traditional can warmer. Depicted seated, from a similar angle, she too is concentrating on a task – crocheting or lace-making, rather than peeling potatoes. It was painted by his brother Willem Hendrik (1863-1918), who became an architect and draftsman.

Melitta Steenhuis, a great-granddaughter of Reverend Kam, told me that her children were “raised in a family of artists” and that, according to tradition, they often went out to draw with Van Gogh. Melitta herself is a sculptor and jewelry maker, suggesting that the Kam family has lost none of their talents.

THE Atlas Van Gogh in Brabant should be released in English, hopefully later this year.