Van Gogh’s imitators paint using ten times the number of brush strokes in the copies that he used in the original.
Why is that interesting?
Leave a comment, if you like.
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Sperry Hunt: Texas-born Singer-Songwriter of Contemporary Folk Music 
If that is true, I think it is related to the bigger picture of integrated color that Van Gogh was working with. I think that Van Gogh couldn’t quite keep up with his inspiration to document his vision of color in life, so he devised habitual techniques for making every stroke lay down as much color as possible, quickening his process. Van Gogh was reflecting life, with changing light. Maybe imitators are trying to replicate the paint on the canvas flawlessly as Van Gogh left it and are not thinking about the original subjects.
Kurisawa has a segment called Crows in his film Dreams with Martin Scorsese playing Van Gogh. It addresses an urgency in Van Goghs paintings related to the transience of landscapes.
Very profound. I was thinking it was just that he was so clear in his vision. But you’re right about the transcience. My mother would paint a landscape over several days, carefully returning to the spot at the right hour each day to rediscover it. And sometimes she would lament that she should have left it alone and not tried to improve it in the studio when she no longer saw the light before her.
The Nova episode I drew this from said that almost all of Van Gogh’s paintings were done in a couple of days.