Vincent van Gogh: landscapes

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most famous artists in the history of Western art. He sought to convey his emotional and spiritual state in each of the works. Although he only sold one painting in his entire life, he is now one of the most popular artists of all time.

Role in art

His canvases, with dense, visible brush strokes, executed in a vibrant palette, emphasize the expression of the artist's personality, embodied in the paint. All paintings, including van Gogh's landscapes, give a direct representation of how the artist saw each scene, interpreting it with his eyes, mind and heart. This radically idiosyncratic, emotionally evocative style continues to influence artists throughout the 20th century to the present day.

Artist career

The disease overtook the artist at the age of 27. He never took professional painting lessons. Van Gogh met the Impressionists in Paris, who greatly influenced his work. He spent about 5 years learning his craft. Notmany of these early works survive. Almost all of what he created and what remained for the next generations was drawn in the last 5 years of his life. Being in severe depression, the artist committed suicide. He died at just 37 years old.

First landscapes

Van Gogh began painting scenes from Paris in 1886. The following year, in the spring of 1887, he began to create canvases using much brighter tones and quick brushstrokes. That spring, he stayed with friend and painter Émile Bernard, who, along with other pointillist and impressionist painters, was a major influence on van Gogh. This can be clearly seen in the changes in the artist's paintings. Van Gogh continued to draw landscapes in Asnieres, a suburb of Paris, putting a special vitality into them. The park scenes, views of the River Seine and new factories were painted in the spring with other artists such as Bernard and Paul Signac.

Many paintings, in particular some seascapes, van Gogh wrote in the impasto technique, which, however, differed from the similar one used by the Impressionists, due to greater expressiveness and vigor. An example of this technique is Seascape at Sainte-Marie (1888).

Theme

One of the themes in van Gogh's landscapes was the rise of industrialism and its impact on the countryside. For the artist, peasant life and the life of a farmer were considered, perhaps, the most correct form of life. From the beginning of his adult life, he was interested in working people. He depicted them onthroughout his career, including in landscape paintings. For van Gogh, landscapes are depictions of natural settings. They symbolize the celebration of nature and those who work and live in it.

Being in different cities, the artist depicted them in urban landscapes. Van Gogh painted Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Asnieres, Arles.

Motives of nature

The artist painted his first wheat field in 1885. It was the painting “Sheaves of Wheat in the Field”, and since 1888 this theme has become the main one for him. Since then, Vincent has painted wheat fields wherever he is in France. In Arles, where he lived with Gauguin, van Gogh painted fields and farms. The painting "Farm in a Wheat Field" shows a tree growing in a field of wheat before harvest. A modest white house with a yellow roof lit by the bright sun can be seen in the distance beyond the field.

While in a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy, Vincent painted twelve paintings depicting a field of wheat that he could see from his window.

Van Gogh's landscapes showing a growing industrial society can be seen as a warning of what France was losing at the time. Vincent was well aware of the social significance of agriculture. As a metaphor for life, wheat and agriculture show the life cycle; it grows, it is harvested, and it sustains another life. Van Gogh painted all these stages.

In 1888 the artist lived in Arles. Many of Van Gogh's landscapes were created here, he often painted local residents. Arles is locatedalong the mouth of the river Rhone, and this river has become an ideal place for painting. "Starry Night Over the Rhone" shows the city at night lit with bright yellow lights, with a dark blue night sky above, depicting Ursa Major. A year later, in Saint-Rémy, he painted another night scene with similar elements. In The Starry Night, he shows another night scene, this time the city is shown in the distance. van Gogh's "Starry Night" is a depiction of a dramatic night scene with thick strokes of the night sky and clouds swirling around bright yellow stars contrasting with the rich blue sky.

While the artist himself said he did not see himself as a landscape painter, nature was often the subject of his work. He often included figures in his paintings that distinguish his work from traditional landscapes, but the overall effect is quite similar. Van Gogh's landscapes were directly related to his thoughts about life and death. Like wheat fields, van Gogh used the theme of cypress and olive trees to show the cycles of life, as well as harvest and death. He had a keen understanding of people and the importance of people's relationship with nature. His landscapes demonstrate these relationships.