| Arles: View from the Wheat Fields | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year | June 1888 |
| Dimensions | 73 cm× 54 cm(29 in× 21 in) |
| Location | Musée Rodin (F545), Paris |
Arles: View from the Wheat Fields (also known as Wheat Field with Sheaves and Arles in the Background) was painted by Vincent van Gogh in June 1888, among a number of paintings he made of wheat fields that summer. It is currently displayed at the Musee Rodin in Paris, France.
Van Gogh was about 35 years of age when he moved to Arles in southern France. There he was at the height of his career, producing some of his best work. His paintings represented different aspects of ordinary life, such as Harvest at La Crau. The sunflower paintings, some of the most recognizable of Van Gogh's paintings, were created in this time. He worked continuously to keep up with his ideas for paintings. This was also likely one of Van Gogh's happier periods of life. He was confident, clear-minded and seemingly content. [1]
His work during this period represents a culmination of influences, such as Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism and Japanese art (see Japonism) from his period in Paris the prior two years. His style evolved into one with vivid colors and energetic, impasto brush strokes. [2]
The close association of peasants and the cycles of nature particularly interested Van Gogh, such as the sowing of seeds, harvest and sheaves of wheat in the fields. [3] Van Gogh saw plowing, sowing and harvesting symbolic to man's efforts to overwhelm the cycles of nature: "the sower and the wheat sheaf stood for eternity, and the reaper and his scythe for irrevocable death." The dark hours conducive to germination and regeneration are depicted in The Sower and wheat fields at sunset. [3]
In 1889 Van Gogh wrote of the way in which wheat was symbolic to him: "What can a person do when he thinks of all the things he cannot understand, but look at the fields of wheat... We, who live by bread, are we not ourselves very much like wheat... to be reaped when we are ripe." [4]
During the last half of June he worked on a group of ten "Harvest" paintings, [2] which allowed him to experiment with color and technique. "I have now spent a week working hard in the wheatfields, under the blazing sun," Van Gogh wrote on 21 June 1888 to his brother Theo. [5] [6]
Arles: View from the Wheat Fields [7] represents the harvest. In the foreground are sheaves of harvested wheat leaning against one another. The center of the painting depicts the harvesting process, [8] a couple at work in a sea of yellow and ochre. Across the horizon is the town of Arles. [9] Van Gogh described the series of wheat fields as "…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." [10] [11] Van Gogh used landscape-format for all of his Wheat Fields paintings, the one exception was this painting which was made in portrait-format. [9]
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful in his career, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, which eventually led to his suicide at age thirty-seven.
The year 1890 in art involved some significant events.
The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Widely regarded as Van Gogh's magnum opus, The Starry Night is one of the most recognizable paintings in Western art.
Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and Van Gogh's own relationship with them.
Décoration for the Yellow House was the main project Vincent van Gogh focused on in Arles, from August 1888 until his breakdown the day before Christmas. This Décoration had no pre-defined form or size; the central idea of the Décoration grew step by step, with the progress of his work. Starting with the Sunflowers, portraits were included in the next step. Finally, mid-September 1888, the idea took shape: from this time on he concentrated on size 30 canvases, which were all meant to form part of this Décoration.
Vincent Van Gogh was displayed at the 1890 Les XX exhibition—an invitation-only show exclusively for members—in Brussels, Belgium. This served to demonstrate the recognition Van Gogh received from his avant-garde peers during his life. The choices of his works and their arrangements illustrated his thinking about his years of work in Provence.
The Wheat Field is a series of oil paintings executed by Vincent van Gogh in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. All of them depict the view Van Gogh had from the window of his bedroom on the top floor of the asylum: a field enclosed by stone walls just beneath his window and excluded from normal life by the rear wall of the asylum grounds; beyond this enclosure farm land, accompanied by olive groves and vineyards, ran up to the hills at the foot of the mountain range called Les Alpilles.
The Langlois Bridge at Arles is the subject of four oil paintings, one watercolor and four drawings by Vincent van Gogh. The works, made in 1888 when Van Gogh lived in Arles, in southern France, represent a melding of formal and creative aspects. Van Gogh used a perspective frame that he built and used in The Hague to create precise lines and angles when portraying perspective.
A Wheatfield with Cypresses is any of three similar 1889 oil paintings by Vincent van Gogh, as part of his wheat field series. All were exhibited at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental asylum at Saint-Rémy near Arles, France, where Van Gogh was voluntarily a patient from May 1889 to May 1890. The works were inspired by the view from the window at the asylum towards the Alpilles mountains.
Landscape with Snow is a painting by Vincent van Gogh in 1888, believed to be one of the first paintings that he made in Arles. It is one of at least ten 1882 to 1889 oil and watercolor van Gogh paintings of a snowy landscape. The painting reflects the La Crau plains set against Montmajour and hills along the horizon.
La Mousmé also known as La Mousmé, Sitting in a Cane Chair, Half-Figure was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1888 while living in Arles, which van Gogh dubbed "the Japan of the south". Retreating from the city, he hoped that his time in Arles would evoke in his work the simple, yet dramatic expression of Japanese art.
Farmhouse in Provence, also known as Entrance Gate to a Farm with Haystacks, is an oil-on-canvas painting produced in 1888 by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh in Arles, Provence, at the height of his career. Partially due to having been inspired by painter Adolphe Monticelli, Van Gogh sought the Provence region of France to further expand his painting skill and experience. Van Gogh used several pairs of complementary colors in the Farmhouse in Provence, the color contrast bringing an intensity to his work. The painting is owned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Wheat Fields is a series of dozens of paintings by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh, borne out of his religious studies and sermons, connection to nature, appreciation of manual laborers and desire to provide a means of offering comfort to others. The wheat field works demonstrate his progression as an artist from the drab Wheat Sheaves made in 1885 in the Netherlands to the colorful and dramatic 1888–1890 paintings from Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise in rural France.
Vincent van Gogh enjoyed making Paintings of Children. He once said that it's the only thing that "excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else." Painting children, in particular represented rebirth and the infinite. Over his career Van Gogh did not make many paintings of children, but those he completed were special to him. During the ten years of Van Gogh's career as a painter, from 1881 to 1890, his work changed and grew richer, particularly in how he used color and techniques symbolically or evocatively.
Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémy is a collection of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made when he was a self-admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, since renamed the Clinique Van Gogh, from May 1889 until May 1890. During much of his stay there he was confined to the grounds of the asylum, and he made paintings of the garden, the enclosed wheat field that he could see outside his room and a few portraits of individuals at the asylum. During his stay at Saint-Paul asylum, Van Gogh experienced periods of illness when he could not paint. When he was able to resume, painting provided solace and meaning for him. Nature seemed especially meaningful to him, trees, the landscape, even caterpillars as representative of the opportunity for transformation and budding flowers symbolizing the cycle of life. One of the more recognizable works of this period is The Irises. Works of the interior of the hospital convey the isolation and sadness that he felt. From the window of his cell he saw an enclosed wheat field, the subject of many paintings made from his room. He was able to make but a few portraits while at Saint-Paul.
Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885.
Enclosed Field with Peasant is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, painted around 12 October 1889. The Size 30 painting, measuring 73 cm × 92 cm, depicts a scene of a ploughed field near the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, with a lilac bush, a peasant carrying a wheatsheaf, several buildings, and the Alpilles mountains rising behind, with a small patch of sky. Van Gogh considered it a pendant painting to The Reaper executed earlier in 1889. It is currently part of the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Rain is an oil-on-canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh, created in 1889, while he was a voluntary patient at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He repeatedly painted the view through the window of his room, depicting the colours and shades of the fields and hills around Saint-Rémy as they appeared at various times of day and in varying weather conditions. Rain measures 73.3 cm × 92.4 cm and is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the United States.
Reaper, Wheat Field with Reaper, or Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun is the title given to each of a series of three oil-on-canvas paintings by Vincent van Gogh of a man reaping a wheat field under a bright early-morning sun. To the artist, the reaper represented death and "humanity would be the wheat being reaped". However, Van Gogh did not consider the work to be sad but "almost smiling" and taking "place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold".