Vincent van Gogh

van Gogh, Vincent
Dutch, 1853 - 1890

Vincent van Gogh, born in 1853, grew up in the southern Netherlands, where his father was a minister. After seven years at a commercial art firm, Van Gogh’s desire to help humanity led him to become a teacher, preacher, and missionary—yet without success. Working as a missionary among coal miners in Belgium, he had begun to draw in earnest; finally, dismissed by church authorities in 1880, he found his vocation in art.

Van Gogh’s earliest paintings were earth-toned scenes of nature and peasants, but he became increasingly influenced by Japanese prints and the work of the impressionists in France. In 1886 he arrived in Paris, where his real formation as a painter began. Under the influence of Camille Pissarro, Van Gogh brightened his somber palette and juxtaposed complementary colors for luminous effect. Younger artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin prompted him to use color symbolically and for its emotional resonance.

Although stimulated by the city’s artistic environment, Van Gogh found life in Paris physically exhausting and moved in early 1888 to Arles. He hoped Provence’s warm climate would relax him and that the brilliant colors and strong light of the south would provide inspiration for his art. Working feverishly, Van Gogh pushed his style to greater expression with intense, energetic brushwork and saturated, complementary colors. Yet his densely painted canvases remained connected to nature—their colors and rhythmic surfaces communicate the spiritual power he believed inhabited and shaped nature's forms. His activity was not undisciplined; quite the opposite, he worked diligently to perfect his craft.

Van Gogh hoped to attract like-minded painters to Arles, but only Gauguin joined him, staying about two months. It was soon clear that their personalities and artistic temperaments were incompatible, and Van Gogh suffered a breakdown just before Christmas. In April 1889, following periods of intense work interrupted by recurring mental disturbances, Van Gogh committed himself to a sanitarium in St.-Rémy. He painted whenever he could, believing that in work lay his only chance for sanity. After a year, he returned north to be closer to his brother Théo, who had been his constant support; in July 1890 he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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A profusion of white roses bursting from the neck of a tan jug almost fills the height of this horizontal still life painting. The roses have large, round blooms with petals tinged with denim and aquamarine blue, sage green, mauve pink, teal, and butter yellow. Emerald-green leaves fill the spaces between blossoms. The jug has a short, rounded handle and sits on a sea glass-green surface. A few blooms lie in the lower left corner and at the foot of the vessel. Many of the flowers, leaves, and vase are outlined with navy blue or black. A mint-green wall with wavy, diagonal streaks of cream white fills the background. The paint is applied thickly with visible strokes.
Vincent van Gogh, Roses, 1890, oil on canvas, Gift of Pamela Harriman in memory of W. Averell Harriman, 1991.67.1

Roses

Vincent van Gogh · 1890 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1991.67.1
Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman wearing a floppy, canary-yellow hat and a long white dress stands in a field of spring green in this vertical painting. Brushstrokes and loose dabs of paint are visible throughout. The woman’s body is angled to our left, and she looks off in that direction with bright green eyes. Her nose, eyebrows, and narrow chin are outlined with medium brown, and her pink lips are closed. Her black hair is pulled back under the hat, the wide brim of which droops down either side of her face. A sky-blue ribbon or decoration is on the front of the crown. Her dress has a high collar, a fitted bodice, long sleeves, and a long skirt. Pale pink daubs on the white dress are thickly applied so the texture of the paint can be seen on the surface of the canvas. The background is painted with long and short curved dashes of celery green layered over laurel and cool green. Several tangerine-orange dots, a few shell-pink dabs, and some angular, heart-shaped forms in cobalt blue to each side of the woman suggest flowers.
Vincent van Gogh, Girl in White, 1890, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.30

Girl in White

Vincent van Gogh · 1890 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.30
Verdant green fields roll in undulating waves back alongside a road in this horizontal landscape painting. The fields take up the left and center of the composition and are painted with thick, curling strokes of emerald, pea, and celery green, and corn yellow to suggest grasses and plants. The pale green road runs up along the right edge of the painting, and is layered with strokes and daubs in butter yellow, spring green, and faint blue. The fields and road meet the horizon line about halfway up the canvas, where an aquamarine-blue sky swirling with white and periwinkle-blue clouds fills the top half of the painting.
Vincent van Gogh, Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2013.122.1

Green Wheat Fields, Auvers

Vincent van Gogh · 1890 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2013.122.1
Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5

Self-Portrait

Vincent van Gogh · 1889 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1998.74.5
A white path and gray stone wall wind through ochre and harvest-yellow fields beneath a brilliant, turquoise sky in this stylized, horizontal landscape painting. The scene is created with long, visible brushstrokes of vivid color. Closest to us, the field is painted with vertical strokes of golden yellow and pea green. Touches of cardinal red and slashes of pine green create flowers around the end of the stone wall, which curves toward us from the background, at the center of this painting. The wall is painted with horizontal dashes of lilac and lavender purple, salmon pink, and periwinkle blue. A person wearing peach-colored trousers, a peacock-blue shirt, and a dark hat walks away from us, into the field, to our left of the wall. The white road enters the scene from the right, and meets the stone wall and a second wall on the far side of the road at a gate. Two columns rise from the walls to mark the spot of the gate, which opens into a property with three tall haystacks and a house. To our left, the house is painted with areas of warm yellow for the walls, honey brown for the roof, which is outlined in navy blue, and turquoise for the doors and windows. A few green trees, made of dots of bottle and forest green, are scattered near the house and haystacks. One sapphire-blue tree grows near the house. A band of azure blue along the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up the painting, suggests a mountain range in the distance. Swirls of white suggest clouds in the turquoise sky. The paint is visibly textured throughout.
Vincent van Gogh, Farmhouse in Provence, 1888, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.34

Farmhouse in Provence

Vincent van Gogh · 1888 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.17.34
Shown from about the knees up, a young woman sits in a chair angled to our right but she turns her face to look at us in this loosely painted, vertical portrait. Her chair has a rounded back and arms made from what looks like bent, woody vines, and the background is a solid field of pale aqua. Her dark hair is parted in the middle and tied at the nape of her neck with a red ribbon. Dark eyebrows curve over brown eyes, and she has a rounded nose, and her petal-pink lips are slightly parted. Her pale peach skin is tinged with green on her face and hands. Her right arm, on our left, rests along the arm of the chair. In her other hand, which rests in her lap, she holds a sprig of blooming oleander, with light pink flowers and green leaves. The bodice of her high-necked dress is striped with brick red and royal blue, and is lined with a row of round gold buttons down the front. The sleeves come down to her forearms and the cuffs and collar at her neck are white. Her full skirt is royal blue with pumpkin-orange dots. The brushwork is loose throughout and individual brushstrokes are visible, especially in the stripes of her bodice and the patchy peach tones that make up her skin.
Vincent van Gogh, La Mousmé, 1888, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.151

La Mousmé

Vincent van Gogh · 1888 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.151
The print shows the upper body of a man in a seated position. His head is slightly tilted to the left as he gazes forward, with one hand holding a pipe up to his mouth. The man's facial features include pronounced wrinkles on his forehead, deep-set eyes, a prominent mustache, and textured hair that is combed back. He is wearing a buttoned jacket over a white shirt. Behind him there are abstract bushes in front of a fence, and the sky is blank.
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Louis Lucien Gachet, Dr. Gachet (Man with a Pipe), 1890, etching on Japanese paper, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.8221

Dr. Gachet (Man with a Pipe)

Vincent van Gogh, Paul Louis Lucien Gachet · 1890 · etching on Japanese paper ·  Accession ID  1943.3.8221
Nine oranges and lemons sit in a shallow basket with dark green, spiky branches behind and a pair of cobalt-blue gloves in front in this horizontal still life painting. The scene is painted with long, loose brushstrokes, which are visible throughout. The muted orange and golden yellow fruit are outlined with blue, as is the woven basket in which they sit. The two cypress branches behind and to either side of the basket are painted with sky blue along the stems and long, bristly needles. The gloves sit one atop the other near the lower right corner, and the top glove has three brown stripes down the back. The surface beneath the still life is sand brown, and the pale turquoise background takes up the top third of the composition. The artist signed and dated this with the location in the lower right corner, “Vincent Arles 89.”
Vincent van Gogh, Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2014.18.13

Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves

Vincent van Gogh · 1889 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.18.13
Three women stand on or next to a ladder picking olives in an orchard in this horizontal landscape painting. The women, trees, ground, and sky are all painted with long, parallel brushstrokes that curve and swirl over the canvas. The palette is dominated by sage and laurel green, tan and chocolate brown, spruce blue, and eggshell white. The women are outlined with dark brown lines. All three wear long skirts and long-sleeved shirts, and all reach for olives on the trees or into baskets. One woman, to our left, stands on the ladder and faces us; the second woman leans or sits against the right side of the ladder and faces away, her hair covered in a cloth; and the third woman stands at the foot of the ladder to our right, turning away from us. The tan and pale green of their clothing is echoed in trees around them. Short, distinct brushstrokes in pine and light green, with a few touches of silvery blue, create leaves on trees whose gnarled trunks are outlined with dark brown. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and the sky above is painted with distinct strokes of ivory, pale mint green, and a few touches of shell pink. The ground around the women and trees is painted with sage and celery green, slate blue, and brown. The brushstrokes are spaced far enough apart in places that bare canvas is visible underneath, especially in the ground.
Vincent van Gogh, The Olive Orchard, 1889, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.152

The Olive Orchard

Vincent van Gogh · 1889 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.152
In shades of mint, laurel, and eucalyptus green, the head and shoulders of a chubby baby fill this vertical portrait painting. It is created with long, visible brushstrokes, some of which are thick enough to cast shadows onto the canvas beneath. The baby’s skin is painted with cool, light green, with peach-colored highlights. The baby has large, vivid blue eyes gazing intently down and off to our right, full lips, and chubby cheeks. The white garment comes to the baby’s elbows, and the pudgy fingers touch. The baby wears a gold bracelet and a gold ring with a round, red stone on the right hand, to our left. The garment and white cap on the head are outlined in sky or royal blue. Painted with vertical strokes, the background is a darker shade of laurel green.
Vincent van Gogh, Roulin's Baby, 1888, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.31

Roulin's Baby

Vincent van Gogh · 1888 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.31

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Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.

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