Vincent van Gogh Drawings Volume 2: Nuenen 1883-85, the second in the eight-volume catalogue raisonne of Van Gogh's drawings and paintings in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, examines the drawings the artist made during his two-year stay in the Brabant village of Nuenen. It is his depictions of the Brabant landscape and the harsh life led by peasants there that characterize his oeuvre of the period. During this time his paintings and drawings take on a new confidence and coherence they have previously lacked. He approaches drawing from a new angle, aiming to depict 'not a hand [...] but a gesture, not a mathematically correct head, but the grand expression'. This volume contains dozens of studies of heads and hands, and several composition and detail sketches, which demonstrate this development and which show how he prepared for the masterpiece of his Dutch period, The Potato Eaters. As with Volume 1, the author Sjraar van Heugten provides a detailed technical analysis of each of the 140 full-colour reproductions of Van Gogh's drawings illustrated in this volume.
This complete catalogue of the Van Gogh Museum collection, to be published in seven volumes, reflects the most up-to-date research on the artist. Four volumes are devoted to the drawings and three to the paintings.