Rhythmic Brushstrokes Distinguish Van Gogh from His Contemporaries: Findings via Automated Brushstroke Extraction

• Activity Number: 222
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: IMS
• Author(s): Jia Li*+ and Lei Yao and Ella Hendriks and James Z. Wang
• Companies: National Science Foundation and Penn State University and Van Gogh Museum and Penn State University
• Keywords: Statistical analysis of paintings ; Brushstroke extraction ; image segmentation ; painting authentication ; painting dating

Abstract

Art historians have long observed the highly characteristic brushstroke styles of Vincent van Gogh and have relied on discerning these styles for authenticating and dating his works. In our work, we compared van Gogh with his contemporaries by statistically analyzing a massive set of automatically extracted brushstrokes. A novel extraction method is developed by exploiting an integration of edge detection and clustering-based segmentation. Evidence substantiates that van Gogh's brushstrokes are strongly rhythmic. That is, regularly shaped brushstrokes are tightly arranged, creating a repetitive and patterned impression. We also found that the traits that distinguish van Gogh's paintings in different time periods of his development are all different from those distinguishing van Gogh from his peers. This study confirms that the combined brushwork features identified as special to van Gogh are consistently held throughout his French periods of production (1886-1890).