Van Gogh's flowers

Vincent van Gogh was a flower fan!

It all began in Paris, where he lived for two years (1886-88).

During his time there, he noticed that flower still lifes sold well.

Some French artists even specialised in painting flower still lifes.

Van Gogh started painting flower still lifes in the hope they would sell well.

Vincent van Gogh | Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, 1890 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vincent Van Gogh | Butterflies series

Butterflies is a series paintings made by Vincent van Gogh in 1889 and 1890.

Van Gogh made at least four paintings of butterflies and one of a moth.

The metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly was symbolic to Van Gogh of men and women's capability for transformation.

Vincent van Gogh | Butterflies and Poppies | Van Gogh Museum

Vincent Van Gogh | A Lane near Arles, 1888

A Lane Near Arles (Allee bei Arles) was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1888, while he was living in Arles.

It depicts a lane surrounded by trees running between the fields outside Arles, France.

A Lane Near Arles is currently in the collection of the Pommersches Landesmuseum, Greifswald, in Germany.

Vincent van Gogh settled in Arles in 1888 because he wanted "a different light".

Vincent Van Gogh | A Lane Near Arles, 1888 | Pomeranian State Museum Greifswald, Germany

Vincent van Gogh | The Laundry Boat on the Seine at Asnières, 1887

The Laundry Boat on the Seine at Asnières exemplifies some of the radical directions emerging from the paintings Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) completed in Paris.

In March 1886, Van Gogh left his native Netherlands to reunite with his brother, Theo, in the French capital.

Soon after, he began meeting with several leading avant-garde artists whose works embodied strong reactions against the Impressionist tendencies that dominated the Parisian art world.

In 1887, Van Gogh took up residence in Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, and his encounters with Signac and Gauguin proved catalytic for the painter's developing practice.

Vincent van Gogh | The Laundry Boat on the Seine at Asnières, 1887 | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Gauguin shared Van Gogh's enthusiasm for 19th-century Japanese woodblock prints and emulated their large planes of color in his burgeoning Synthetism and Cloisonnism techniques.

The compositional diagonals and strong contours in this painting recall both the distinctive divisions of the picture plane in Japanese landscapes and Gauguin’s simplified adaptation of these features.

The scene's striking chromatic contrasts and thickly layered brushstrokes also point to Van Gogh's interest in the experiments with complementary colors Seurat and Signac were making in these years.

The restaurant and park scenes and the views of the Seine that Van Gogh completed while living in Asnières began to demonstrate the indelible influence of Synthetism, Divisionism, and Pointillism even as a unique Post-Impressionist style was emerging in his paintings. | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Vincent van Gogh | Self-portrait as a painter, 1887-88

The Laundry Boat on the Seine at Asnières esemplifica alcune delle direzioni radicali emerse dai dipinti completati da Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) a Parigi.

Nel marzo 1886, Van Gogh lasciò la natia Olanda per riunirsi al fratello Theo nella capitale francese.

Poco dopo, iniziò a incontrare diversi importanti artisti d'avanguardia le cui opere incarnavano forti reazioni contro le tendenze impressioniste che dominavano il mondo dell'arte parigino.

Nel 1887, Van Gogh si stabilì ad Asnières, un sobborgo nord-occidentale di Parigi, ed i suoi incontri con Signac e Gauguin si rivelarono catalizzatori per la pratica in via di sviluppo del pittore.

Gauguin condivideva l'entusiasmo di Van Gogh per le stampe xilografiche giapponesi del XIX secolo e ne emulò i grandi piani di colore nelle sue fiorenti tecniche di Sintetismo e Cloisonnisme.

Le diagonali compositive e i forti contorni in questo dipinto richiamano sia le divisioni distintive del piano pittorico nei paesaggi giapponesi sia l'adattamento semplificato di queste caratteristiche da parte di Gauguin.

I contrasti cromatici sorprendenti della scena e le pennellate spesse e stratificate indicano anche l'interesse di Van Gogh per gli esperimenti con colori complementari che Seurat e Signac stavano facendo in quegli anni.

Le scene del ristorante e del parco e le vedute della Senna che Van Gogh completò mentre viveva ad Asnières iniziarono a dimostrare l'influenza indelebile del sintetismo, del divisionismo e del puntinismo, anche se uno stile Post-impressionista unico stava emergendo nei suoi dipinti. | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

More Asnières paintings by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh | The restaurant Rispal in Asnières, 1887 | Museo Nelson-Atkins

Vincent van Gogh | Bridges across the Seine at Asnieres, 1887 | Collezione Bührle

Vincent van Gogh | Fishing in spring the Pont de Clichy (Asnieres), 1887 | Art Institute of Chicago

Vincent van Gogh | River Bank in Springtime, 1887 | Dallas Museum of Art

Vincent van Gogh | Restaurant de la Sirène at Asnières, 1887 | Musée d'Orsay

Vincent van Gogh | Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières), 1887 | Art Institute of Chicago

Vincent van Gogh | The Factory at Asnières, 1887

In the late nineteenth century, the French landscape was becoming increasingly marked by signs of industry.

Van Gogh depicts a glass factory in Asnières, a suburb northwest of Paris where the artist painted frequently in the summer of 1887.

The round objects stacked along the sides of the pathway are balls of glass awaiting melting inside the buildings.

They would have been formed into lantern globes for gas streetlights and interior fixtures. | Source: © The Barnes Foundation

Vincent van Gogh | The Factory at Asnières, Summer, 1887 | The Barnes Foundation

Vincent van Gogh | The Poor and Money, 1882

'Drawing For National Lottery Today' - says the sign on the wall.

Many people have showed up for the event. Vincent wrote to his brother Theo that he saw this scene on a rainy day in The Hague.

He was moved by the vain hope of these shabbily dressed 'poor souls'.

Would the hard-earned money they spent on lottery tickets gain them anything at all?

Vincent van Gogh | The Poor and Money, 1882 (chalk, watercolour, pen and ink, on paper) | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Vincent van Gogh | Pietà (after Delacroix), 1889

Van Gogh based his Pietà on a lithograph of a painting by Eugène Delacroix.

This image of the Virgin Mary mourning the dead Christ is, however, more a variation on the original work than a copy.

Van Gogh has taken Delacroix’s theme and composition and added his own colour and personal signature.

Vincent Van Gogh | The sowers series

Peasant imagery and especially that of the 'Sower' was something that Van Gogh turned to numerous times throughout his career.

His affiliation with this subject was partly as a response to the work of the romantic Realists such as Millet, and a reflection of his own socialist ideals.

The sower in particular was a figure that Van Gogh saw in terms of representing the eternal cycle of agricultural life, of honorable endeavor and tradition, and symbolized these qualities to the artist.

Vincent van Gogh | Mountains at Saint-Rémy, 1889

"Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that's the real way to learn to understand art better and better.

Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see" 

- Vincent van Gogh's letter to his brother Theo, 1874.

Vincent van Gogh | Mountains at Saint-Rémy, 1889 | Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

During the years preceding his suicide in 1890, Vincent van Gogh suffered increasingly frequent attacks of mental distress, the cause of which remains unclear.

"Mountains at Saint-Rémy" was painted in July 1889, when Van Gogh was recovering from just such an episode at the hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in the southern French town of Saint-Rémy.

Van Gogh, Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum

Vincent van Gogh travelled to Amsterdam in 1885 to visit the Rijksmuseum, which had recently opened.

On the day of his visit he painted his "View of Amsterdam from Central Station".

The paint still wet, he took the new work with him to the Rijksmuseum.

Vincent van Gogh | Wheat field, 1888 | Rijksmuseum

Vincent van Gogh's suicide letter

Vincent van Gogh was an influential artist during the nineteenth century.

Widely believed to have been struggling with depression and insanity, he went out to a nearby field and shot himself in the chest, before stumbling back to his house where his brother Theo cared for him for two days, before he finally died.

Although he had sent a letter to Theo only three days earlier, he was carrying another letter to his brother on his person at the time of his suicide, largely seen as a suicide note.

Van Gogh severed his own ear with a razor in 1888 | The Courtauld Gallery London

Vincent van Gogh | Studies of heads

Van Gogh considered the modern portrait to be the most important genre for painters.

"What I’m most passionate about, much more than all the rest in my profession - is the portrait, the modern portrait.

I seek it by way of colour, and am certainly not alone in seeking it in this way’, wrote Vincent to this sister Willemien in 1890.

Vincent van Gogh | Head of a woman | Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh's "Café Terrace at Night" was inspired by Maupassant's "Bel-Ami"

After finishing Café Terrace at Night, Vincent van Gogh wrote a letter to his sister expressing his enthusiasm:

"You never told me if you had read Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami, and what you now think of his talent in general.

I say this because the beginning of Bel-Ami is precisely the description of a starry night in Paris, with the lighted cafés of the boulevard, and it's something like the same subject that I've painted just now". (Letter 678 from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh, Arles, 1888.)

Vincent van Gogh | Café Terrace at Night, 1888 | Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands

Vincent van Gogh | Orchard in Blossom

Vincent van Gogh | Peach Trees in Blossom, April 1888 | Courtauld Gallery, London

This is van Gogh’s last view of a plain outside Arles that he often painted since settling in the south of France in 1888.

He wrote to the painter Paul Signac "everything is small there ... even the mountains, as in certain Japanese landscapes, which is the reason why the subject attracted me".

The snow-capped peak on the right (a deliberate echo of Mount Fuji in Japan) and blossoming trees create a peaceful atmosphere.

But the bent figure at left emphasises this is a man-made landscape. | © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

Vincent van Gogh | Peach Trees in Blossom, April 1888 | Courtauld Gallery, London

Questa è l'ultima veduta di van Gogh di una pianura fuori Arles che dipinse spesso da quando si stabilì nel sud della Francia nel 1888.

Vincent van Gogh | Houses at Auvers, 1890

"Houses at Auvers" is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, located at the Toledo Museum of Art.

It was created towards the end of May or beginning of June 1890, shortly after he had moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town northwest of Paris, France.

His move was prompted by his dissatisfaction with the boredom and monotony of asylum life at Saint-Rémy, as well as by his emergence as an artist of some renown following Albert Aurier's celebrated January 1890, Mercure de France, review of his work.

In his final two months at Saint-Rémy, van Gogh painted from memory a number of canvases he called, "reminisces of the North", harking back to his Dutch roots.

The influence of this return to the North continued at Auvers, notably in The Church at Auvers.

He did not, however, repeat his studies of peasant life of the sort he had made in his Nuenen period. His paintings of dwellings at Auvers encompassed a range of social domains. | Source: © Wikipedia

Vincent van Gogh | Houses at Auvers, 1890 | Toledo Museum of Art

Vincent van Gogh | The Olive Trees series

Vincent van Gogh painted at least 15 paintings of olive trees, mostly in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889. At his own request, he lived at an asylum there from May 1889 through May 1890 painting the gardens of the asylum and, when he had permission to venture outside its walls, nearby olive trees, cypresses and wheat fields.

One painting, "Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape", was a complement to "The Starry Night".

The olive tree paintings had special significance for van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh | Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon 1890 | Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo

Vincent van Gogh | Le pont de Trinquetaille, 1888

The fifteen months that Van Gogh spent at Arles in 1888-1889 represent a pivotal moment in his career, "the zenith, the climax, the greatest flowering of Van Gogh's decade of artistic activity", according to Ronald Pickvance.

Freed from the pressures of urban life and inspired by the brilliant Provençal light, the artist integrated the results of months of experimentation and produced one modern masterpiece after another. With its bold composition and expressive palette, "Le pont de Trinquetaille" epitomizes his mature style.

Van Gogh | La Mousmé, 1888

The intention and determination that inform Van Gogh's art can be obscured by the sensational legends that have arisen about his life.

The artist's correspondence, particularly frdeom his brief mature period of 1888-1890, contradicts popular lore and attests to the deliberateness, sensitivity, and integrity of his work.

On July 29, 1888, Van Gogh wrote his younger brother Theo, an art dealer in a Parisian gallery, that "if you know what a 'mousmé' is (you will know when you have read Loti's Madame Chrysanthème), I have just painted one.

Vincent van Gogh | Our life is a pilgrim's progress | The Letters

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh🎨 refers to a collection of 903 surviving letters written (820) or received (83) by Vincent van Gogh.

More than 650 of these were from Vincent to his brother Theo.

The collection also includes letters van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil and other relatives, as well as between artists such as Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard and Émile Bernard.

Van Gogh | Fishing in spring the Pont de Clichy (Asnieres), 1887

In this canvas, Vincent uses pointillist like dabs and his own developing thick dashes of yellows, lavender and greens to portray a locale commonly chosen by the impressionists, the Seine around Asnieres. A fisherman with blue pants, yellow brown shirt and black hat with pole resting in his right hand on his black outlined leg is fishing in the Seine below with the Pont de Clichy in the background.

The Seine is depicted in lateral strokes of blue from cobalt to sky blue in the foreground and lighter blues to white beyond the fisherman. The lavender and prussian blue strokes are repeated in the foreground water, the fisherman’s pants and the under arch of the bridge.

Reflections of the river’s bank are accomplished with multihued vertical strokes coming at the viewer with lavender and cobalt at top left and then greens and peach and blue vertical strokes at center right.

The green, yellow and blue boats are moored between brown vertically stroked wavy poles driven into the river bottom and look like man’s humble use of the carefully constructed tree trunk Vincent depicts at left.

Two trunks have been cut and we can see the bare trunk tops in yellow while the red and green and black dots and horizontal dashes give the tree detail and character and a life-like emotion as it lends a comforting shade to the pastoral scene. While vague figures cross the bridge in the distance and the green and yellow flashes of the leaves frame our fisherman, he is in a quiet and tranquil harbor and is peacefully awaiting his catch.

The painting hangs at the Art Institute in Chicago, here are some of their words on the work:

“In technique, Fishing in Spring is a testament to Vincent van Gogh’s friendship with Paul Signac**. Van Gogh had seen works by Signac and George Seurat** in the spring of 1886 at the final Impressionist exhibition. Signac was an eloquent spokesman for Seurat’s pioneering Neo-Impressionism**, explaining it as a natural development of Impressionism. Under Signac’s influence, Van Gogh’s palette brightened, his brushstrokes became more varied, and his subject matter expanded. The setting of this work is the Seine River at the Pont de Clichy, near Asnières, where Van Gogh and Signac painted together on several occasions”.

Vincent would later help to have Seurat and Signac**’s paintings exhibited at Le Tambourin alongside his own and all three were allowed to show at the XXX in January of 1887 in an entry salon. This painting is not mentioned in any of Vincent or Theo’s letters so we cannot know what Vincent thought of it precisely.

Though the bridge has changed, the location of Vincent’s perspective for this work can be found today.  It is just off the Quai de Clichy across the Seine from Asnieres.

Oil on Canvas,
Art Institute of Chicago,
Spring 1887