When you think of Vincent van Gogh, your brain probably goes straight to that thick, gooey oil paint. You think of The Starry Night or those heavy sunflowers that look like they’re wilting right off the canvas. Most people assume he just lived and died by the palette knife. But there’s this whole other side to him that honestly gets ignored. Van Gogh watercolor paintings aren't just "sketches" or "practice." They were a massive part of how he learned to see light.
Actually, it’s kinda wild how many he did. We’re talking nearly 150 standalone watercolors.
He didn't just use them to plan out his big oils, either. For Vincent, watercolor was a way to capture movement fast. It was cheap. It was portable. And for a guy who was constantly broke and moving from one rental to another, portability mattered. He’d hike out into the Dutch fields or the blazing sun of Arles with a small tin of paints and just go for it. If you look closely at these pieces, you see a totally different artist—one who was lighter, faster, and maybe a little less tortured than the guy we see in the heavy oils.
The myth that he was "just" an oil painter
There’s this weird misconception that Van Gogh only picked up watercolors because he couldn't afford oil paints. While it’s true he was usually asking his brother Theo for more money, he actually respected the medium a lot. In the early 1880s, while he was in The Hague, he was hanging out with his cousin-in-law, Anton Mauve. Mauve was a big deal in the Hague School and a master of watercolors.
He basically sat Vincent down and forced him to learn the technical side of it. Vincent struggled. He hated the rules. But you can see the shift in his work almost immediately.
Take a look at Young Man with a Broom from 1882. It’s gritty. It’s dark. It doesn't look like the "pretty" watercolors people were selling in galleries at the time. Vincent was using watercolor to capture the working class, the dirt, and the struggle. He wasn't trying to be delicate. He was using the paint to tell a story about real life.
Why the colors look different now
Here’s the thing about van Gogh watercolor paintings that most museums don't like to shout about: they’re fading. Vincent was a bit of a mad scientist with his pigments. He loved these vibrant, experimental colors like chrome yellow and geranium lake.
The problem? They’re light-sensitive.
A lot of the pinks and reds he used have literally disappeared over the last 140 years. That means when you look at one of his watercolors today, you’re often seeing a "ghost" version of what he actually painted. A sky that looks grey today might have been a vivid violet when he finished it. Researchers at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam have been using non-invasive mapping to figure out what the original colors were. It's basically art history forensics.
The Arles breakthrough and the light of the south
When Vincent moved to the South of France in 1888, everything changed. The light in Arles was different—sharper, harder, and way more intense than the grey skies of the Netherlands. This is where his watercolor style really exploded. He started mixing media like a maniac.
He’d use watercolor, then go over it with gouache, then add lines with a reed pen and iron gall ink.
The Harvest is a perfect example. You’ve got these massive spans of yellow fields, but instead of just being a flat wash, he used the watercolor to create a sense of vibrating heat. It feels like you’re standing in the middle of a French summer. You can almost hear the cicadas. He wasn't just "filling in the blanks" between the lines; he was using the water to let the light of the paper shine through.
That’s the secret of watercolor. In oil painting, you add white paint to get light. In watercolor, you leave the paper alone. Vincent learned to use the "emptiness" of the paper to represent the blinding sun.
The Reed Pen Obsession
Honestly, you can't talk about his watercolors without talking about his pens. Vincent would cut his own pens from reeds he found in the marshes. He used them to add these tiny, rhythmic dots and dashes over the watercolor washes.
It’s almost like he was "drawing" with paint.
- He would lay down a broad, wet wash of color.
- While it was drying, he’d use the reed pen to define shapes.
- Finally, he’d add "stippling" (those little dots) to create texture.
This gave his watercolors a weirdly modern, almost graphic-novel feel. It’s much more structured than the blurry, dreamy watercolors of someone like Turner. Vincent’s watercolors have bones. They have a skeleton.
What most people get wrong about his "sketches"
If you go to a big Van Gogh exhibition, the watercolors are usually tucked away in a corner with lower lighting. This makes people think they’re less important. But for Vincent, these were often finished works. He sent them to Theo as a way to show off his progress.
"I have some new ones for you," he’d write. He viewed them as a distinct category of his output.
Take The Sower or his various paintings of the Langlois Bridge. He did them in oil, sure. But the watercolor versions often have a clarity and a "breathability" that the oils lack. In the oils, the paint is so thick it feels claustrophobic. In the watercolors, there’s room to move. It’s a glimpse into a version of Van Gogh that was a little less heavy-handed and a little more observant of the small details.
The tragic loss of "The Oise at Auvers"
One of the most famous van Gogh watercolor paintings is actually a series he did right at the end of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise. He was staying at the Ravoux Inn, and he was incredibly productive. He’d go down to the river and paint the boats and the bridges. These works are heartbreakingly beautiful because they show a man trying to find peace in nature.
The brushwork is frantic. It’s loose. It’s almost abstract in some places.
You can see his mental state in the way the paint hits the paper. It’s not "careful" anymore. It’s desperate. He was trying to capture the essence of a tree or a river in about twenty minutes before the light changed or his mood shifted.
How to spot a "real" Van Gogh style watercolor
If you’re looking at these online or in a book, there are a few "tells" that show his specific hand:
- The "Halo" Effect: He often left a tiny gap of white paper between different colors so they wouldn't bleed together.
- The Ink Change: Look for brown or black ink lines. If they look a bit "scratchy," that’s the reed pen.
- The Perspective: He used a perspective frame (a wooden tool with wires) to get his angles right. Even in his "messy" watercolors, the horizons are usually dead on.
- Lack of Black: He almost never used pure black paint from a tube. His "blacks" are usually deep blues, purples, or greens mixed together.
Why his watercolors are so rare today
You don't see them often because of "lux." Lux is the measurement of light, and watercolors are the divas of the art world. If you leave a Van Gogh watercolor in a normally lit room for a year, it will be ruined. Permanent damage.
Most of the 150 or so watercolors are kept in dark drawers in the Van Gogh Museum or the Kröller-Müller Museum. They only bring them out for a few weeks every few years. This scarcity has made them some of the most valuable works on paper in existence. In 2021, a watercolor titled Meules de blé (Wheat Stacks) sold for nearly $36 million. For a piece of paper and some tinted water, that’s insane. But it shows that the art world has finally caught up to what Vincent already knew: his watercolors weren't just side projects.
Actionable insights for art lovers
If you want to actually experience these works rather than just reading about them, you have to be strategic. You can't just walk into a gallery and expect to see them on the wall.
Check the "Works on Paper" schedule.
Museums like the Met in New York or the National Gallery in London have "Print Rooms." Sometimes you can actually request to see specific works on paper if you make an appointment in advance, though for a Van Gogh, you usually need a "scholarly" reason.
Look for "Facsimile" editions.
Because the originals are so fragile, many publishers have created high-end facsimiles that mimic the exact texture and fading of the paper. It’s the closest most of us will get to seeing the real thing without a trip to a vault in Amsterdam.
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Study the drawings first.
Van Gogh’s watercolors are basically colored drawings. If you want to understand his technique, look at his pencil and charcoal sketches first. The "architecture" of the painting is always in the drawing.
Visit the Van Gogh Museum online.
They have a "high-res" section where you can zoom in so close you can see the individual fibers of the paper. It’s actually better than seeing it in person because you aren't fighting a crowd or a piece of protective glass.
Vincent didn't live to see his oils become icons. He didn't live to see his watercolors sell for millions. But in those quiet moments by the river or in the middle of a Dutch field, he was finding a way to make the world look bright, even when things were dark. The watercolors are the proof of that search. They are the most intimate, raw, and honest things he ever created.
To really understand the man, you have to stop looking at the thick paint and start looking at the water.
Next Steps for Deepening Your Knowledge
- Research the "Hague School": To understand where Vincent started, look up artists like Jozef Israëls and Anton Mauve. This is the foundation of his watercolor style.
- Explore the "Sien" drawings: These early watercolors and drawings of Sien Hoornik show his emotional use of the medium before he moved to the bright colors of France.
- Examine the pigments: Look into the "Degradation of Pigments" studies by the Van Gogh Museum to see digital reconstructions of how these paintings looked in 1888.