Van Gogh Museum unveils new water color

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has unveiled its latest addition by the tormented artist — an 1882 water color of a pollard willow under a cloudy gray sky from his early Dutch period.

The museum bought the painting at auction in London earlier this year for EUR 1.58 million ($2.05 million).

Museum Director Axel Rueger on Thursday called the painting “one of the most representative water colors from Van Gogh’s Hague period.’’

Pollard Willow is part of a series of six water colours Van Gogh painted in the summer of 1882. Curator Marije Vellekoop says these works represent a turning point in the artist’s oeuvre. “Up to that period, most of his work consisted of figure studies and works in black and white. He then suddenly changed over to landscapes and cityscapes and works in color.”

Letters by Van Gogh in the museum’s collection show that the artist thought Pollard Willow was the best work from the series. He describes in his letter the atmosphere he wanted to evoke in the water colour. “A sombre landscape - that dead tree near the stagnant, duckweed-covered water.'

As one of the painter’s first dabblings with color, the landscape is a far cry from the exuberant and colorful postimpressionist oil paintings that characterized Van Gogh’s later works.