The Van Gogh Mystery Project

This year, each fourth grade class worked on a collaborative art project re-creating Vincent Van Gogh paintings. Here’s how it worked: each child was given a separate rectangle showing a portion of a painting. They were to reproduce the image they were given using pastels on paper. The twist? The class didn’t see in advance what the original Van Gogh work looked like so they could only guess what each individual rectangle was depicting and what all the rectangles, when put together, would reveal.

La Berceuse 

During the period 1888-1889, Vincent Van Gogh painted a series of portraits of Augustine Roulin, the wife of the postmaster of Arles. The portraits, which he titled La Berceuse, or “woman who rocks the cradle,” show Augustine Roulin rocking an unseen cradle via a string on her lap. One portrait in the series, which was begun just before the artist’s breakdown, can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Working Blind 

Not knowing what the finished work would depict, the children had to focus on the information in their individual rectangles: colors, shapes, texture, line. As they worked, some kids tried to figure out what the finished work would depict. Some guesses? A garden, a hammer, a fish pond.

Building a Masterpiece 

Once the kids had completed their rectangles, it was time to construct the full image. Working together, the children tried to place the rectangles together – six across and five down – in the proper order so that they would produce their version of a Van Gogh. It was puzzle work – lining up colors and shapes that continued from one rectangle to another.

Mystery Solved! 

With each rectangle fitted in place, the children could see that, together, they had created a richly hued portrait of a woman. The next step was to compare their work to a picture of Van Gogh’s version. Our favorite? The kids’ version!