John MacDougall posted a May 1 2019 entry on his blog, The New Yorker and Me, titled “Updike on Van Gogh,” in which he draws attention to “Updke’s great posthumous essay collection Higher Gossip” and considers what he considers to be the two best pieces: “Uncertain Skills, Determined Spirit” and “The Purest of Styles.” Both deal with van Gogh, MacDougall’s “favorite painter.”

MacDougall quotes from both essays, in particular paying notice to his favorite passage in “Uncertain Skills” that “contrasts van Gogh’s two pen copies of his superb Harvest in Provence.” Of Updike’s assessment that “The drawings brim with latent color” he writes, “That last line is inspired.