Public soup kitchen
What is chiaroscuro?
Sien (Van Gogh series)
Quite poor, Sien's family often relied upon the public soup kitchen for food. Hulsker called the signed drawing "The Public Soup Kitchen" (F1020a below) important and attractive. Van Gogh and his contemporary George Hendrik Breitner had sketched together at a soup kitchen in the Geest (it is not known which of the several possibilities it was). After going to the trouble and expense of installing shutters in his windows to adust the light and to recreate the scene itself in his studio, van Gogh was able to study his models at lesisure. In this way he was able to introduce more "chiaroscuro" (light and dark) in his drawing, which he executed with the natural ('mountain') chalk that Theo had sent him and whose properties he lauds in his letters. All the models are from Sien's family: her mother and baby on the left, her sister, back turned, and her daughter, hair cropped as a precaution against lice, in the center, with Sien herself, superbly executed in profile, on the right. The watercolor F1020b (below) is much less successful as van Gogh himself acknowledged, blaming the paper in part for not being right for the job.