Explore the Comparison to literal likeness of this artwork.
In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, the authors compare Van Gogh's Girl in White to the portrait of a woman in John Byam Shaw's 1900 Boer War.  They make the comparison by identifying desired characteristics of modernistic art, such as works "emphasizing formal aspects, and as embodying what they took to be a 'primitive' or 'direct' vision such as Vincent van Gogh's Girl in White.  To modernists, this is desirable over the "exhibited skill and sophistication of literal likeness," such as John Byam Shaw's 1900 Boer War. The more primitive and direct works, they say, provide a richer feeling, whereas the literal interpretation represents a lack of "emotional content".
Byam Shaw John Byam Shaw Vincent van Gogh