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

Vincent van Gogh | Wheatfield under Thunderclouds, 1890

Landscapes inspired overwhelming, but also very complex emotions in Vincent van Gogh🎨 (1853-1890).

The paintings of wheatfields are an expression of extreme sadness and loneliness, while they at the same time embody the strength he derived from them.

In 1890, an emotionally unsettled, humorless and argumentative Van Gogh was sent by his brother to the rural French city of Auberge Ravoux where he lived under the care and supervision of Dr. Cachet.

For almost three months until his death on July 29th of that year Van Gogh made about 70 paintings, thirteen of which focused on the wheat harvest from the middle of late July.

Vincent van Gogh | View of the Church of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, 1889

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)⏭

Title: View of the Church of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole

Date: Saint-Rémy, Autumn 1889

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 45.1 × 60.4 cm (17.7 × 23.7 in)

Collection: Elizabeth Taylor, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, North America

Van Gogh: "Disegnare a parole è anch'essa un'arte"

""Siamo tanto attaccati a questa vecchia vita perché, accanto ai momenti di tristezza, abbiamo anche momenti di gioia in cui anima e cuore esultano - come l'allodola che non può fare a meno di cantare al mattino, anche se l'anima talvolta trema in noi, piena di timori" - Vincent Van Gogh - Lettere a Theo, Amsterdam, 30 maggio 1877

Van Gogh | Figures study

"And my aim in my life is to make picture and drawings, as many and as well as I can, then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking: "Oh, pictures I might have made!"

Theo, I declare I prefer to think how arms, legs, head are attached to the trunk, rather than whether I myself am or am not more or less an artist" - Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Autumn 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935

Van Gogh: "I call myself a peasant painter"

"When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future, I feel at home there" - Quote of Vincent, Summer 1885

Vincent Van Gogh | First Steps (after Millet), 1890

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Date: 1890

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 72.4 x 91.1 cm

Current location: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Van Gogh | Sunflowers, 1888

This is one of five versions of Sunflowers on display in museums and galleries across the world.

Van Gogh made the paintings to decorate his house in Arles in readiness for a visit from his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin.

"The sunflower is mine", Van Gogh once declared, and it is clear that the flower had various meanings for him.

Vincent van Gogh | Sunflowers, 1888 | National Gallery, London

Van Gogh | Holland Landscapes

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my paintings, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life - the power to create" - Quote in his letter to brother Theo.

Van Gogh: "I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate"

"There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even-the French air clears up the brain and does good-a world of good".

"An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men".

"The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism".

Van Gogh in Paris, 1886-1888 | Still Lifes

The two years that Van Gogh spent in Paris were of crucial importance for his development from painter in the Dutch Realist tradition to modern artist.

His encounter with the latest movement there had a profound impact on his work, although it was a gradual process rather than a abrupt break with what had gone before.

Vincent began experimenting with new styles like impressionism, Pointillism and Japonism.

As he gradually abandoned what he later called his Dutch palette of grey tones his paintings became increasingly luminous and colorful.

Van Gogh in Paris, 1886-1888

Vincent made his first visit to Paris in May 1873.

He spent a few days in the city, visiting museums and the headquarters of his employers, the international art dealers Goupil and Cie.

He then left for England to work in the firm’s London branch.

In autumn 1874, Goupil transferred him from London to Paris for two months.

Vincent van Gogh | Irises, 1890

Title: Irises
Artist: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)
Date: 1890
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 29 x 36 1/4 in. (73.7 x 92.1 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of Adele R. Levy, 1958
Accession Number: 58.187
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 825.

In May 1890, just before he checked himself out of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted four exuberant bouquets of spring flowers, the only still lifes of any ambition he had undertaken during his yearlong stay: two of irises, two of roses, in contrasting color schemes and formats.

In the Museum’s Irises he sought a “harmonious and soft” effect by placing the “violet” flowers against a “pink background”, which have since faded owing to his use of fugitive red pigments. Another work from this series, Roses (1993.400.5), hangs in the adjacent gallery. Both were owned by the artist’s mother until her death in 1907. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Vincent van Gogh | The Sheaf-Binder (after Millet), 1889

Title: The Sheaf-Binder (after Millet).

Date: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, September 1889.

Author: Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)*.

Medium: oil on canvas.

Dimensions: 44.5 cm x 33.1 cm.

Current location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

Vincent van Gogh | The Wheat Field series / La serie Campi di grano

The Wheat Field is a series of oil paintings executed by Vincent van Gogh in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. All of them depict the view Van Gogh had from the window of his bedroom on the top floor of the asylum: a field enclosed by stone walls just beneath his window and excluded from normal life by the rear wall of the asylum grounds; beyond this enclosure farm land, accompanied by olive groves and vineyards, ran up to the hills at the foot of the mountain range called Les Alpilles.

From May 1889-1890, Van Gogh recorded this view in changing settings: after a storm, with a reaper in the field, with fresh wheat raising in autumn and with flowers in the spring.

Vincent van Gogh | Study of hands

• Cos'è disegnare? Come ci si arriva? È l'atto di aprirsi un passaggio attraverso un muro di ferro invisibile che sembra trovarsi tra ciò che si sente e che si può.
• Faccio sempre ciò che non so fare per imparare come va fatto.
• L'arte è gelosa... bisogna lavorare a lungo e duramente per afferrarne l'essenza. Quello a cui miro è maledettamente difficile, eppure non penso di mirare troppo in alto.
• Soffrire senza lamentarsi è l'unica lezione da imparare in questa vita.

Vincent Van Gogh | Drawings for study

Perhaps the most prolific post-impressionist painter of all time, Vincent Van Gogh gave us his mind, his heart, his soul, and, most notably, his ear. His works are probably better known generally than those of any other painter in history.

Born in 1853, Van Gogh was the son of a Dutch Protestant minister.

Early in his life, he possessed a moody temperament that would later haunt him in his efforts to become a successful artist.

His brief and turbulent life is thought to epitomize the mad genius legend.