page_title: Paintings of Children (Van Gogh series)
section_title: Netherlands
hierarchical_section_title: Paintings of Children (Van Gogh series) / Netherlands
context_page_description: Vincent van Gogh enjoyed making Paintings of Children. He once said that it's the only thing that "excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else." Painting children, in particular represented rebirth and the infinite. Over his career Van Gogh did not make many paintings of children, but those he completed were special to him. During the ten years of Van Gogh's career as a painter, from 1881 to 1890, his work changed and grew richer, particularly in how he used color and techniques symbolically or evocatively.
  His early works were earth-toned and dull. After a transformative period in Paris, Van Gogh embarked on his most prolific periods starting in Arles, in the south of France and continuing until his final days in Auvers-sur-Oise. During those times his work became more colorful and more reflective of influences, such as Impressionism and Japonism. Japonism influences are understood in the painting of a young girl, La Mousmé. Among others, he was inspired by the work of Jean-François Millet which he emulated in First Steps and Evening: The Watch.
  Van Gogh enjoyed painting portraits when he had available models.
context_section_description: Boy Cutting Grass with a Sickle, made in 1881, is owned by the Kröller-Müller Museum.
  Of a study that Van Gogh made for Girl in a Wood or Girl in White in the Woods, he remarked at how much he enjoyed the work and explains how he wishes to trigger the audience's senses and how they may experience the painting: "The other study in the wood is of some large green beech trunks on a stretch of ground covered with dry sticks, and the little figure of a girl in white. There was the great difficulty of keeping it clear, and of getting space between the trunks standing at different distances - and the place and relative bulk of those trunks change with the perspective - to make it so that one can breathe and walk around in it, and to make you smell the fragrance of the wood."
  In The Girl in the Woods the girl is overshadowed by the immense oak trees.  The painting may be reminiscent for Van Gogh of the times in his youth he fled to the Zundert Woods to escape from his family.
  A Girl in the Street, Two Coaches in the Background and Peasant Woman with Child on Her Lap are both part of private collections.
  Van Gogh was attracted to Sien partly for her pregnancy and made use of the opportunity to paint her infant boy.
  Van Gogh reached a point around 1885 when he was looking to free himself physically, emotionally and artistically from the gray colors of his art and life, moving away from Nuenen to develop, as author Albert Lubin describes, a more "imaginative, colorful art that suited him much better."
caption: A Girl in the Street, Two Coaches in the Background, 1882, Private Collection (F13)
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