The record dates The Old Tower to 1884 and measures it at 18.8 by 21.6 centimetres. Of the 333 works in this catalogue with a recorded size, none is smaller. That is a fact about the record rather than about the painting, and it is the kind of fact a catalogue exists to keep: sizes are copied from holding institutions, and the smallest and largest entries are where copying errors show up first.
The work is held by the E.G. Bührle Foundation in Zürich, one of six entries here in that collection, dated between 1884 and 1890. The measured palette reads as neutral — a return given for twenty-six works across the whole catalogue and for three of the twenty-five dated 1884.
Four titles here name a tower, two dated 1884 and two dated 1885, all of them inside the Nuenen period. A motif confined to a single period is exactly what the five-place arrangement is designed to expose, and it is worth noting that this catalogue holds a second 1884 entry called The Old Tower in the Fields — a near-identical title, a separate record, and two works that a looser catalogue would collapse into one.
Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he c
Dutch painter and draftsman, 1853-1890
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
Louie Drehmer, Curator, Vincent van Gogh Paintings
Louie curates Vincent van Gogh Paintings, cross-referencing every entry against museum records, Wikidata, the Getty Union List of Artist Names, and Wikipedia.
The Old Tower is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, 1884, held at E.G. Bührle Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland.
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