|
Vincent van Gogh (artist) Dutch, 1853 - 1890 Farmhouse in Provence, 1888 oil on canvas Overall: 46.1 x 60.9 cm (18 1/8 x 24 in.) framed: 74.9 x 88.9 x 10.8 cm (29 1/2 x 35 x 4 1/4 in.) Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection 1970.17.34 |
Object 3 of 7
Van Gogh arrived in Arles in 1888, to a landscape covered with snow. But it was sun that he sought, a brilliance that would wash out detail and simplify forms, reducing the world around him to the flat patterns he admired in Japanese woodblocks. Arles, he said, was “the Japan of the South.” His time there was amazingly productive. In just 444 days he completed more than two hundred paintings and about one hundred drawings and wrote more than two hundred letters.
He described seven studies of wheat fields, “landscapes, yellow—old gold—done quickly, quickly, quickly, and in a hurry just like the harvester who is silent under the blazing sun, intent only on the reaping.” Yet he was also at pains to point out that these should not be “criticized as hasty” since they were “calculated long beforehand.” A pen and ink drawing of this scene exists, apparently done first.
Pairs of complementary colors—red and green plants, woven highlights of oranges and blue in the fence, even the pink clouds that enliven the turquoise sky—seem almost to vibrate. This technique, based on the work of color theorists, was used by impressionists to enhance the luminosity of their pictures.
| « | back to gallery | » | continue tour |