Farmhouse In Provence

Title

Farmhouse In Provence

Artist

Eric Glaser

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

"Farmhouse in Provence"

Artist: Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)

Title: Farmhouse in Provence

Boerderij in de Provence

Genre: Landscape art

Date: June 1888

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: Height: 46.1 cm (18.1 in); Width: 60.9 cm (23.9 in)

Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. USA

Place of creation: Arles, France

Painting History: Mme Johanna van Gogh-Bonger [1862-1925], the artist's sister-in-law, Amsterdam; sold 20 November 1890 through (Julien Tanguy Gallery, Paris) to (Willy Gretor [Wilhelm Rudolph Julius Petersen, 1868-1923], Paris); gift to Maria Slavona [1865-1931], Paris and Berlin; her husband Otto Ackermann [1871-1963], Paris and Berlin. Gaston Bernheim de Villers [1870-1953], Paris, by 1919 until at least 1933; sold to Capt. Edward H. Molyneux [1891-1974], Paris; sold 15 August 1955 to Ailsa Mellon Bruce [1901-1969], New York; bequest 1970 to NGA.

Credit Line: Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Van Gogh arrived in Arles in February 1888, the landscape covered with snow. But it was sun that he sought in Provence—a brilliant light that would wash out detail and simplify forms, reducing the world around him to the kinds of flat patterns he admired in Japanese woodblock prints. Arles, he said, was "the Japan of the South." Van Gogh's time in Arles was amazingly productive. In about 15 months—just 444 days—he produced more than 200 paintings, about 100 drawings, and wrote more than 200 letters.

He described a series of seven studies of wheat fields: "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." Yet he was also at pains to point out that these works should not be "criticized as hasty" since this "quick succession of canvases [was] quickly executed but calculated long beforehand."

Pairs of complementary colors—the red and green of the plants, the woven highlights of oranges and blue in the fence, even the pink clouds that enliven the turquoise sky—shimmer and seem almost to vibrate against each other. The impressionists used this technique to enhance the luminosity of their pictures. Pissarro, who helped introduce Van Gogh to these concepts, noted, "if I didn't know how colors behaved from the researches of...scientists, we [the impressionists] would not have been able to pursue our study of light with so much confidence."

Text Credit: National Gallery of Art

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Additional image editing by Eric Glaser

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March 1st, 2021

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