Van Gogh Farmhouses in a Wheat Field Near Arles
Painting: Farmhouses in a Wheat Field Near Arles
Artist: Vincent van Gogh
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Style: Post-Impressionism
Subject: Fields
Size: 24.5 x 35.0 cm
Original Location: Arles
March 30, 2009
March 21, 2009
Camille Pissarro The Garden of The Tuileries on A Winter Afternoon
Painting: The Garden of The Tuileries on A Winter Afternoon
Artist: Camille Pissarro
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 29×36.25″
Year: 1899
Pissarro and his famiy moved into an apartment on the Rue de Rivoli, Paris, in December 1898. The winter and spring he painted fourteen views from his windows. Some depict the Louvre, which he could see to the east. Here, he looks south over the Jardin des Tuileries, past the Seine River, toward the twin steeples of the neo-Gothic church of Sainte-Clotilde.
Monet Ice Floes
Painting: Ice Floes, Misty Morning
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 26×39.5″
Year: 1893
Artist: Claude Monet
Owner: H.O.Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs.H.O.Havemeyer
The winter of 1892-93 was a particularly cold and snowy one in central France. In January Monet informed his dealer that despite the low temperatures, he was painting outdoors in order to capture his impressions of the partially frozen Seine River. This almost monochromatic canvas was painted near the town of Bennecourt, located halfway between Paris and Rouen.
March 19, 2009
Van Gogh and His Sunflowers in Arles
Van Gogh’s incredible sunflower series warrants a discussion on its own. While so many of Van Gogh’s works are instantly recognizable to anyone in the world, it may be his sunflower series which are the most famous of his works. Though Vincent had used sunflowers as a subject of his painting as early as 1886, the majority of his bold and beautiful sunflower series were painted in 1888 in Arles, in the hopes of pleasing Paul Gauguin upon his arrival at the “Yellow House”.
March 18, 2009
Van Gogh Painting - The Sunflowers
Painting: Sunflowers
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 92.1 x 73 cm
Year: 1888
Artist: Vincent VAN GOGH
This is one of four paintings of sunflowers dating from August and September 1888. Van Gogh intended to decorate Gauguin’s room with these paintings in the so-called Yellow House that he rented in Arles in the South of France. He and Gauguin worked there together between October and December 1888.
Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in August 1888, ‘I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when you know that what I’m at is the painting of some sunflowers. If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow. I am working at it every morning from sunrise on, for the flowers fade so quickly. I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers … it gives a singular effect.’
The dying flowers are built up with thick brushstrokes (impasto). The impasto evokes the texture of the seed-heads. Van Gogh produced a replica of this painting in January 1889, and perhaps another one later in the year. The various versions and replicas remain much debated among Van Gogh scholars.
March 17, 2009
Van Gogh The Starry Night
Van Gogh may have had doubts about the painting, but subsequent commentators have elevated ‘The Starry Night‘ to a place among his most exceptional and important works. The combination of style and religious overtones has fuelled endless critical debate. Several authors have investigated the extent to which Van Gogh’s night sky is true to life, but the science of astronomy has failed to produce an unambiguous answer. In the light of Van Gogh’s opinions this is hardly surprising: he was permitting himself the artistic freedom which Bernard and Gauguin also exploited.