Museum unveils watercolor from Van Gogh's youth

This photo released by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Thursday, May 10, 2012, shows an 1882 water color of a pollard willow by Vincent van Gogh from his early Dutch period. / AP Photo/Van Gogh Museum

(AP) AMSTERDAM - A young Vincent van Gogh was so struck by a dead willow leaning "lonely and melancholy" over a pond near The Hague that he knew at once he had to paint it.

"I'm going to attack it tomorrow morning," he wrote to his brother Theo on July 26, 1882.

The Van Gogh Museum unveiled the painting Thursday, the first addition in five years to its world-famous collection of works by the post-impressionist master.

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At a time when the artist was still honing his skills in perspective, anatomy and proportion using pen and pencil sketches, the watercolor was a bolt from the blue, although its muted tones are still a far cry from the exuberant and colorful oil paintings that characterized Van Gogh's later works.

"It's a very elaborate, well done watercolor and that's quite extraordinary in this period of Van Gogh's oeuvre," said Marije Vellekoop, the museum's curator of prints and drawings. "Out of the blue, in the summer, in July, he makes a series of watercolors ... with a lot of detail, but also very painterly, fluent."

The willow trunk droops over the water and a path wends its way to the horizon, where a windmill stands near a railroad depot.

Not unusually for a Dutch summer, gray clouds dominate the sky, but Van Gogh also captured the occasional splash of deep blue as the clouds broke. The sky was almost identical Thursday morning - low gray clouds scudding over the landmark Amsterdam museum - as director Axel Rueger revealed the painting to the media.

Rueger said the painting, bought at auction in London earlier this year for euro 1.5 million ($1.9 million), filled a gap in the museum's collection of Van Gogh works.

"What's so special is it is for the first time a rather substantial work that he executes in color," Rueger told The Associated Press. "It comes from a very small group of works he makes at the time and we didn't have anything like that in our collection."

For now, it will hang at the Van Gogh Museum. Later this year it and dozens of other paintings will be shifted across the Amstel River to the Hermitage Amsterdam while the Van Gogh Museum closes for several months for renovations.

Van Gogh wrote enthusiastically to Theo a few days after completing the painting, and included a sketch. The letter, on faded brown paper, hangs next to the completed painting in the museum. In it, Van Gogh says he considers the willow the best of a series of watercolors he painted that summer.

"I think he was very happy with the result and he was also confident that he could also work with color," said Vellekoop.

[RichZubaty]

It is disgusting to watch rich people "invest" hundreds of millions of dollars in dead artists instead of pumping money into the real economy. What a sick society.

[Transatlantique]

Compositionally, this is very well done. Van Gogh is proof that if the people around an artist don't like that artist for personal reasons, they will never see the beauty of the artist's work. This is what happened to Vincent. He was vilified and feared most of his life, and his work wasn't appreciated by most. He didn't fit in, and this watercolour was an early evocation of the loneliness he must have endured either consciously or unconsciously. There is an "out there" desolation, and I love it.

[audemus]

I am always struck by how Van Gogh seemed to capture the true Spiritual nature of what most of us view as inanimate objects...this piece is certainly no exception.

[verrz]

A very evocative painting. It may be possible to interpret as a spiritual symbols of sorts. The lone figure walking towards the viewer could be a portrayal of Christ in his most vulnerable humanity. The withered tree under dark clouds a parable: "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves.(Jesus to women trying to comfort him on his walk to crucifixion) For if they do this to me in a green tree, what will they do in a dry?" A bit of a stretch maybe, but keep in mind Van Gogh's strong religious feelings had him preaching in the coal mines at one point in his life. Perhaps too he identified with this remark and attitude...

[audemus]

Best to just ignore such ignorant comments verrz...these kind of people always resort to meaningless insults whenever they have nothing of intelligence or thoughtfulness to add to these boards, which is usually most of the time. : )>