The works the Metropolitan Museum has displayed (for those blessed few who manage to escape the perpetual crowds) a new insight into the process that made Van Gogh such an adored and admired artist. In the first major American retrospective the exhibition contains the sketches that transcended vision into legend: the early drawings that became his celebrated paintings.

It is clear from the very first that he made that he was not what we might call a natural born artist. But drawing after drawing his perspective grew clearer. His attention to light was astounding and through the early scribbles in both charcoal and reed pen contained very quick and harsh lines but were extensively detailed. By the time he had traveled to Provence, France his drawings with the reed pen, an ink that he painted with a very small brush were early blueprints for his paintings. He spent months on each piece, carefully filling in the details that gave breadth and life to each work.

As you make your way through the exhibition which contains over 100 drawings, the Met provides background information about where Van Gogh had traveled to, drawings he had sent to his brother- whose opinion he clearly valued greatly- and their correspondence. As his technique grew more solid, he began to paint. Using the same quick strokes he used for his reed drawings, his paintings were ostensibly detailed with great attention to light, shade, color and texture. Several instances in the show are you shown side by side comparisons of the drawings of a particular landscape, clearly done as practice, and the eventual paintings that grew out of them such as the Cypresses, scenes of café’s in France, and his many self portraits.

The Van Gogh exhibition provided a profound amount of insight into a painter that we have admired for so long and known so little about. This show is of great importance and is so strikingly beautiful that I would recommend all to see it before it closes, despite the crowds.