Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars
Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars
<p>Vincent van Gogh seems to have been inspired to make this melancholy drawing after reading the poem “Tristement” (sadly) by the French writer François Coppee, who was known as the “poet of the humble.” The poem describes a mourning widow proceeding along “a very long lane of giant, halfdenuded plane trees.”</p>
<p>Time has enhanced the drawing’s autumnal mood. The iron-gall ink that Van Gogh used, once black, has altered to a dark brown and imparted a golden tone to the paper, the pen lines bleeding so that close hatchings merge and the contrast between light and dark is now muted.</p>

A.G.A. van Rappard, Utrecht; Mrs. Spanjaard-Keller, the Hague; W.B. Tholen, the Hague; D'Audretsch Art Gallery, the Hague, 1940. F.C. d'Audretsch, Wassenaar/New York. Mrs. M. Frank, New York, acquired 1970; by descent; sold, Christie's, New York, Nov. 15, 1989, lot 8; private collection, France; sold, Christie's, New York, Nov. 18, 1998, lot 2, to Richard and Mary L. Gray and the Gray Collection Trust, Chicago (promised to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018); given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2022.