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Weeping Tree, 1889
‘Today I've made one of those drawings which became very dark and quite melancholic for springtime’, Van Gogh wrote to his brother in May 1889. Depicting the same tree and round bush he had often captured in drawings the previous year (18) and (19), Van Gogh created an entirely different composition. He also made more vigorous use of one of his own hand-cut reed pens and other media to give the work its emotional charge.
Reed pen and black-brown ink, with black chalk on off-white wove paper
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Tiffany and Margaret Blake, 1945.31