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*Drawbridge in Nieuw Amsterdam* (F1098)
Drawbridge in Nieuw Amsterdam (F1098)
Artist	Vincent van Gogh
Year	1883
Type	Watercolor
Location	Groninger Museum, Groninger, Netherlands

Drawbridge in Nieuw-Amsterdam is a watercolor created in November 1883 by Vincent van Gogh in Drente, The Netherlands.^[4]

Watercolor painting

Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, of the view outside his room in Nieuw-Amsterdam, Drenthe: "I now have a reasonably large room where a stove has been placed, where there happens to be a small balcony. From which I can even see the heath with the huts. I also look out on a very curious drawbridge." Within the letter he drew a sketch of the bridge, which became the watercolor, Drawbridge in Nieuw-Amsterdam.^[5]

The work was one of 148 watercolors made by Van Gogh, who said of working in that medium in 1881:

What a splendid thing watercolour is to express atmosphere and distance,
so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it, as it were.^[6]

Five years after having made this work, van Gogh made Langlois Bridge at Arles in France which captures a lighter mood.^[7]

Langlois Bridge at Arles, watercolor, 1888, Private collection (F1480)

Notes

^ In his 2006 edition of The Life and Work of Van Gogh, Nordenfalk states that the painting is owned by a collector.^[2] But, Frommer's identifies the painting as part of the Groninger Museum's collection in the passage about the museum.^[3]