land development

Le Moulin de la Galette

Paris, March 1887

Oil on Canvas 46x38cm

Pittsburg Museum of Art,

Carnegie Institute

This is Mountmartre in Vincent’s day it was a rather rural setting and was just beginning to be developed. The building of Sacre Coeur basilica on the top of the hill had just begun you can see some scaffolding behind the big windmill. This mill or Moulin in French is the site for the very famous Renoir of the dancers. The huge old mill made it a landmark, the tax-free status, wine making, the bakery made the mill a destination for Parisians that wanted a day in the country without really leaving town. It may have formed a sentimental attachment for people like Vincent who like a rural life. There is no doubt that windmills remind everyone of the Dutch and Vincent was no different. The distance and remote view of the hill speak again of the outsider’s view. Vincent lived close to the mill with his brother Theo, on Rue Lepic, on the urban developed side of the hill. Many artists lived on this highest spot in Paris. At the same time the van Goghs lived here, Degas, Lautrec, Pissaro, Renoir; lived as well. Mountmartre, means, the mount of the martyr.  

His sermon

The Sower

Arles, November 1888

Oil on burlap on canvas,

73.5x93cm

Zurich, Foundation Collection

E.G. Buhrle

The saint of the future; the Sower. There is a halo or the rising sun behind his head as he casts seeds in the violet shadows of early morning. "As sow so shall ye reap"; this is a sermon by Vincent. The canvas is divided nearly in half sky being brilliantly painted in flecks of cadmium red to yellow hints of green and small cream clouds float lightly. The blooming plum in the foreground speaks to the Japanese influence. The subject, the Sower, is homage to Millet, who, Vincent greatly admired. The colorization is the first indication of Gauguin’s presence. The dabbled vibrant violet shadows beside warm tones and pale green is very Gauguin. Indeed, Gauguin was visiting Vincent. Vincent had hopes of a society of painters in Arles. He thought of himself as sewing the seeds for the new town on the horizon. The fabric this painting was done on was Gauguin’s preferred surface; rough burlap. It is a very pleasant painting the graceful curving branches of the plum tree echo the curves of the rising sun/halo and the movements of the farmer. There is still old fruit on the plum tree waiting to be harvested or fall to earth unused. The tree has been recently pruned and the open wound on the missing branch is close to center. Paris; he was so over that town.

Radio free Wire: Olive trees with Yellow Sky and Sun

Radio free Wire: Olive trees with Yellow Sky and Sun
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/360/Olive-Trees-with-Yellow-Sky-and-Sun.html

Olive trees with Yellow Sky and Sun

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/360/Olive-Trees-with-Yellow-Sky-and-Sun.html

SPF 1000!

Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun

Saint=Remy November 1889

Minneapolis, The Minneapolis

Institute Of Arts

The writhing struggle to emerge into the bright light of Southern France, is symbolic of Vincent’s attempts to grow past the alcoholism that has tortured him, with unhappiness and seizures. The orchard with gnarled olive trees, is like the hospital, where he lived when this was painted. The burning intense sunlight casts  transparent slim, orchid shadows on the tumultuous earth, like the fading evidence of madness. It is not easy or comfortable but the growth of the trees is visible. The cool pale distant mountain echoes the roiling rhythms of the orchard. Vincent was coming to grips with the knowledge, that he could pass beyond the confines of the earth he was planted in. The sun is so powerful a force in this painting, it seems to represent his faith in God; which had wavered during his darkest hours. He feels life stirring, perhaps for the first time in his life, which up to this point had been one depression and disappointment after the next.

Why oh why do I hate Paris?

Boulevard de Clichy

Paris, Febuary-March 1887

Oil on canvas 45.3x55cm

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

(Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

the entire direction of this painting is down and out. All angles are directed down; the large arrow like white sky is pointing down and away. The cold emptiness of paving gives one a feeling of the distance he would have to travel to join the few stiff people close to the shops and cafes. It is pretty clear in this painting, as in others, Vincent didn’t love Paris, not in a drizzle or a sizzle…It is as foreign and remote to his mind as Nuemen his home town was. The trees are bare and thin the pale sky street and buildings, remind me of a corpse with Absinthe green shadows and pathetic sparse, hair like trees. The population is frozen too. There is no life in the crowd on the distant sidewalk. He was miserable and wanted us to know that. He may have been seeking agreement or sympathy, or just a witness to his alienation. 

Living with Mom and sisters

Autumn Landscape

With Four trees

Nuemen, November 1885

Oil on canvas 64x89cm

Otterlo, Knoller Muller Museum

Three trees grow close in a clump two are very close they are fully leafed amber in an island like plot in the middle of a barren field. A line of trees in the distance marks the horizon a lone figure is walking away or approaching it isn’t clear. The fourth tree is standing a bit apart in this bleak landscape it is virtually leafless. It has been very severely pruned producing a knobby ugly top where all the branches grow from. The sky is low and cloudy a lone bird circles. The scene is empty of passion; it feels cold and lonely. There is nothing here to cling to. This was painted while Vincent lived with his family in the parsonage. Vincent’s Father Theodorus died 6 months earlier. The empty heart was still reaching for meaning; the lonely soul expresses the landscape of his life.   

The Windmills of his mind

Memory of the Garden at Etten

Arles, November 1888

Oil on canvas 73.5x 92.5cm

St. Petersburg, Hermitage

At first glance this painting appears to be by Gauguin, who was living with Vincent at this time. Vincent and Paul painted together. Often they painted the same subject. I looks like Paul did most of the convincing as very few of Gauguin’s show any influence of Vincent. This painting not from nature as was usually Vincent’s way but from his mind is another painting of his mother also his sister. It has a feeling of mourning as though the garden were a cemetery the sadness and silence are unexpected emotions in a garden. The bent back of the woman tending the flowers the bent and winding path bring the eye to the dark and woeful pair carrying flowers away from the garden. The Saurat pointillist style is an experiment also seen in the later self-portrait. This painting was done during the later part of Gauguin’s visit when the emotional fabric of their friendship was being ripped apart. Ego and alcoholism are a dangerous mix.     

I want my Mommy

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother

Arles, October 1888

Oil on canvas 40.5x32.5cm

Pasadena California

Norton Simon Museum of Art

I am sure this smiling face is from a photograph; her public mask. Very few depictions of people in this period are smiling, not just Vincent’s portraits but even studio photos a smile was rare. Who could hold a smile posing long enough to paint it. Even photographs, which took a long time to take, are seldom of smiles in this period.

      Does he see his mother as a mysterious Mona Lisa la Giaconda? This is not the mystic smile that barely ripples Mona Lisa face. This is a very proper ministers wife, from an artistic Dutch family. She was disappointed with Vincent. She burned most of his early work. She removed it from boxes where it was stored piled it into a heap in the yard and burned it all. She was hoping he would forget about it and move on to a real job, as any other eldest Dutch son would. If he did not go into the ministry then perhaps he would work in the Goupil Galleries; ‘uncle Cent’ was a partner. She had to deal with children, who died in infancy, and at least three of her children died of suicide, I do not include Vincent into that number, as I’m not convinced that it was a suicide. The incompetence and wildness of Vincent may have been too much for her neat, everything in its place Dutch world.

     Still she smiles her prim little smile looking away from the viewer so as not to have the eye contact so ubiquitous in Vincent’s portraits. The eerie green background intensifies her mourning black buttoned up puritan dress.   

    There she is the artist’s mother, through the artist’s eyes.

Oh the Power the Lord would give us to see ourselves as others see us

Self-portrait

Paris, Summer 1887

Oil on canvas 41x33.3cm

Hartford Connecticut

Wadsworth Atheneuum

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/bio.html

      The determination in Vincent’s face is clear. He had left London and the dreams of the ministry. He knew his sermons would be on the canvas and not at the pulpit. The arguments with Theo, his brother, whom he lived with, on Rue Lepic in Montmartre, were fierce. Theo wanted to paint too. Vincent needed Theo’s financial support.

     The dent on Vincent’s head in this particular portrait is of significance to those who believe that Vincent was not mad but merely an alcoholic, the dent probably from birth or early childhood seems to indicate a strong diagnosis for epilepsy triggered by alcohol. The dent is a sign of a brain injury.    

path to health

Trees in the Garden of

 Saint-Paul Hospital

Saint-Remy,October 1889

Oil on canvas 73x60cm

United States of America,

Private collection

The spindly young trees are reaching out from a sloping hillside. They arch and stretch toward the deep worn path at the foot of the hill that leads to the Hospital. Friends were tempting him back into the art world at this time. He had suffered two terrible alcoholic slips after visits to his friends in Arles. He was attempting to gain control of his demons.  He was reaching like these trees for the path and the light. Sobriety had only been glimpsed at during this period. He did have AA to guide him. His doctor demonstrated that his epilepsy was triggered by alcohol. He was on a slope like the trees writhing with life and asking for the path.

info. the real story of the ear incident

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47362,people,news,vincent-van-goghs-ear-gauguin-sliced-it-off-with-epee

Rare Peonies

Vase with Peonies

Paris, Summer 1886

Oil on canvas54x43cm

Privately owned

(Sotheby’s Auction

London 3/12/1983

Six pink & rose tinted Japanese peonies in an oval white vase sit on a slightly suggested surface in a dark room. The shadows suggest light from the upper left of middle, back light. The flowers drip with their luxurious heavy heads bent almost apologizing for their beauty. This may be one of the most indulgent of Vincent’s canvases. It has the lush feeling of June in Paris. The peony is a sophisticated choice it is not a wild flower but an expensive plant grown in wealthy gardens. This Japanese variety is still rather rare. They were grown in a aristocratic garden. If I didn’t know for a fact that Vincent hated the financial aspect of the art world I would guess he painted this for a bourgeois market. It is a lovely painting and has little of the haunting questions and uncomfortable emotional turmoil one sees so often in Vincent’s work. It is the recording of just some breathtaking fashionable flowers, bowing in modesty. I was not surprised to notice it is in a private collection.    

http://www.vincent-van-gogh-gallery.org/Vase-With-Peonies.html

http://www.abcgallery.com/V/vangogh/vangogh113.html

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/247/Japonaiserie:-Flowering-Plum-Tree-%28after-Hiroshige%29.html

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/14/Avenue-of-Poplars-in-Autumn.html

Japanese influence

Japonaiserie: Flowering Plum Tree

(After Hiroshige)

Paris September-October 1887

Oil on canvas 55x46cm

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

(Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

       The first impression of this painting is that of a Japanese woodcut print. The sides both right and left are framed in orange with Japanese calligraphy marching vertically up the sides. There is a suggestion of bamboo framing the central image. The bamboo is formed into a Wabi Sabi Zen teahouse s unexpected and nonsymmetrical triangle at the top right.  There are thee chops or seal like elements placed on the print denoting in Japan the provenance (former owners) one chop is cadmium red, two chops that slightly over lap at the top are ocher and cadmium red light they all have calligraphy on them.

     The most compelling element is a plum tree in the extreme foreground. The tree is framing again every other element and pushing the perspective of the park lit up with plum blossoms on numerous trees on a deep Hooker’s green ground. The deep color of the blooming plum closest to the viewer, along with the suggestions of the gnarly bark give an intimate feel. It is as though one were sitting in the tree itself, like a child looking across the grove. The grove is cut by a fence which cuts the deep green from the paler green on this far side are  nine human figures and a thatched house on the far right. Over the figures is a thick cloud of plum blossoms in pale yellow and white. The texture of the blooming trees is very like the sakura events in modern Japan, very glorious. The sky above the trees and making a strong horizontal stripe is cadmium red light to cadmium deep at the top. The green shading to pale green to yellow to orange to red is sliced by the strong gnarly vertical plum tree branches punctuated with round pops of individual blossoms. It is a very attractive painting. One cannot help but notice Vincent’s curiosity of this exciting visual exotica that was overtaking France in his day. He wanted to learn how it was done. He did a wonderful job of Vincent dressed in a kimono.         

Zen Art

Meadow in the Garden of

 Saint-Paul Hospital

Saint-Remy, May 1890

Oil on canvas 64.5x81cm

London, National Gallery

      This painting was done just before Vincent left Saint-Remy. He was sober now. He had less than three months to live. The painting is an ordinary piece of earth. One that is not different from scruffy grass fields any of us have looked at; noticed there are no wild flowers and ignored, then walked on. It is the fact that it is so ubiquitous, a humble part of the living planet that attracted Vincent’s eye. He had a wonderful appreciation of the simple, and the overlooked. He saw the golds, browns and greens, and the dark shadows. The narrow path and the suggestion of grape vines, a vineyard, is just above the top edge of the canvas. Most painters would have picked the vineyard to paint. The irregular randomness of the deeply textured grass, on this day in May inspired Vincent. It is the kind of emptiness that attracts children to play and Walt Whitman to write Leaves of Grass. Just the earth, just the grass.

The Man of constant Sorrow

The Old Man in Sorrow

(On the Threshold of Eternity)

Saint-Remy, April-May1890

Oil on canvas 81x65cm

Otterlo, Kroller-Muller Museum

      The pain and remorse goes without saying. The old bald bearded gray haired man head in hands clenched fists I can almost hear his sobs. He sits on a rush chair it sits on a bare wood floor in front of a roaring fire. The man is dressed in blue. Somehow his little laced brown boots look so pathetic. Vincent was so sympathetic, does he see himself in the future, regretting so many lost opportunities. The fire seems to be devouring ghosts. His head seems heavy. His back is bent. His shoes are worn. One wonders what he has done, or what has happened to him. Perhaps he has lost his wife or child. All of the sadness of the world is embodied in this painting.  

A thought about Vincent's Works

Avenue of Poplars in Autumn

Nuemen, October 1884

Oil on canvas on panel,

98.5x66cm

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

    The blue sky seems remote over the lane long shadows stripe across the leaf scatted drive and the empty house is turning it’s back to the lonely exile who is close to the open gate. It is like a dream a nightmare. It is like the scream but silent and haunting. It says you can never go home, and who would want to anyway? The secrets are deep and mute in this frightening painting. It is from an early period and painted of Vincent’s childhood home.

     Along the path behind the figure there are sunny golden patches. In the house there is a window that seems to watch the lane and the traveler.

     Looking at this painting gives one the feeling of the bottom of the sea somehow, the figure and the lane seem submerged. The weight of the air is felt. The end of the day is near, the end of the season is at hand and the beginning of a adventure is immanent, the gates are open.