These were drawn while reading John Updike’s ‘Still Looking: Essays on American Art’

Van Gogh frequently made pencil and charcoal sketches of his paintings included in letters to his friends and family, often immaculately detailed with written descriptions of the colors he saw; like his description of the crowd of a Bullfight in Arles: “the crowd was magnificent, those great color multitudes piled up one above the other on two or three galleries, with the effect of sun and shade and the shadow cast by the enormous ring.” (Van Gogh, Dec 1888)