Art on a towel

Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.
~John Ruskin

I read about Van Gogh painting on a towel and I was like, "Whaaat?" Apparently, it's true. Here's the scoop from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam:

Van Gogh was a lifelong admirer of the work of Charles-François Daubigny. This celebrated landscape painter had lived in Auvers. So when Vincent arrived in the village, he went to see Daubigny's home and garden as soon as he could. This is Van Gogh's first painting of the garden. He later made two larger ones on canvas.

Because Van Gogh did not have any canvas at hand, he painted the garden on a red and white striped tea towel. He first covered the towel with a bright pink ground layer of lead-white pigment mixed with red. This pink base formed a vivid contrast with the green paint he used for the garden. The ground layer is visible between the strokes of paint. The red pigment has faded over time, so the pink base now looks grey.

And now a painting by Charles-Francois Daubigny. The Port of Dieppe: