Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Olive Trees- 1889

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Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

Upon Van Gogh's arrival at the asylum of Saint-Remy in spring of 1889, the olive trees that grew in cultivated groves near the walls of the sanitarium took on great significance for him.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Self-Portrait with  a Straw Hat (1887)

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Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

In 1886, at age thirty-two, Van Gogh arrived in Paris "not even know[ing] what the Impressionist were. "By the time he left, two years later, he had cast off the muddy palette and coarse brushwork that had characterized his earlier efforts and embraced the latest developments in painting.  Here he demonstrates his awareness of Neo-Impressionist technique and color theory, using the back of a Dutch peasant study he had taken with him to Paris.

  Van Gogh produced more than twenty self portraits during Prisian sojourn, Short of funds but determined nevertheless to hone his skills as a figure painter, he became his own best sitter.  "I deliberately bought a good mirror so if I lacked a model I could work from my own likeness."

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Irises 1890

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Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

Upon his arrival at the asylum n Saint-Remy in May 1890, Van Gogh painted views of the institutions' overgrown garden. He ignored still-life subjects during his yearlong hospital say, but before leaving the artist brought his work in Saint-Remy full circle with four lush bouquets of spring flowers: two of roses and two of irises, in contrasting formats and color harmonies. Van Gogh noted that in the "two canvases representing big bunches of violet irises, "he placed" one lot against a pink background" and the other "against a startling citron yellow background" to exploit the play of "disparate complementarity.  "Owing to the use of afugitive red pigment, the "soft and harmonious" effect that he had sought in the Metropolitan painting through the "combination of greens, pinks, violets" has been altered by the fadingof the once pink background to almost white.  Another still life from the series, an upright composition of roses, is on this blog.  Both were owned by he artist's mother, who kept them until her death in 1907.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

First Steps, after Millet, 1890

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Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

In fall and winter 1889-90, while a voluntary patient at the asylum in Saint-Remy, Van Gogh painted twenty-one copies after Millet, an artist he greatly admired.  He considered his copies "improvisations" or
"translations" akin to a musician's interpretation of a composer's work. He let the black-and-white images--whether prints, reproductions, or, as her, a photograph that his brother, Theo, had sent-- "pose as subject"
then "improvised color on it.  "For this work of January 1890, Van Gogh squared-up a photograph
of Millet's First Steps and transferred it to the canvas.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Sunflowers 1887

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Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

Sunflowers appear amid the variegated bouquets that were the the mainstay of Van Gogh's work in Paris in 1886-88.  Intent upon updating his lackluster Dutch palette, he repeatedly turned to "painting flowers" so as "to render intense color and not a gray harmony."  By the summer of 1887, when he adopted the sunflower as the dominant motif in four pictures, he had found his voice as an original colorist.  Apparently conceived in
sequence, this group comprises a preparatory oil sketch for the Metropolitan's canvas (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam); and a larger composition that sets forth a composite image of the two pairs of (Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo).  Paul gauguin acquired the two smaller canvases, and until the mid -1890s, when he sold his most prized possessions to finance his South Seas voyage, they held pride of place above the bed in his Paris apartment.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

L'Arlesieme: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux(1888-1889)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

Marie Ginoux was the proprietress of the Cafe de la Gare, Where Van Gogh lived in Arles between May and September 1888, before he moved into nearby Yellow House.  In early November,wearing the
regional costume of the legendary dark-haired beauties of Arles, she posed for both Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh was thrilled to "have an Arlesienne at last" and quickly "slashed on in an hour" his first, more summarily executed version of this portrait (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), using the thick jute canvas that Gauguin had brought with him to Arles.  Later Van Gogh enhanced that image by adorning the tabletop
with two accessories befitting an Arlesienne: a paraso and gloves.  Those finishing touches were probably added in December 1888 or January 1889, when he revisited the composition to use it as the prototype for Museum"s painting.  Relying on more saturated and richly applied colors to add substance to the of his sitter, and showing her seated at a table with books, Van Gogh made this more compelling portrait of his friend--which he gave to her.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Cypresses, 1889 (click image to enlarge)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

"Cypresses" was painted in late June 1889, shortly after Van Gogh began his year long voluntary stay as a patient in the asylum in Saint-Remy.  The subject, which he found "as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk, both captivated and challenged the artist: "It is a splash of black in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interesting black notes, and the most difficult to hit off exactly that I can imagine."  Van Gogh's initial fascination with cypresses resulted in these paintings" two showing the "big and massive trees" at close range, in vertical format (this and one in the Kroller-Muller Museum, Orrerlo), and a majestic horizontal view "Wheat Field with Cypresses", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

The Flowering Orchard (click image to enlarge)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

This painting belongs to a series of fourteen blossoming orchards that Van Gogh painted in spring, 1888, shortly after his arrival in Arles, the Provencal town in the south of France where he worked from February 1888 until May 1889.  The present example, which includes a scythe and rake, is one of only two orchards that allude to human presence or labor.  The motif and Van Gogh's stylized treatment are related to Japanese prints.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, 1890 (click image to enlarge)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

This still life is not mentioned in Van Gogh's production.  Ostensibly, it is closest to the mixed bouquets of summer flowers that he produced in quantity in Paris (1889-90).  However, it was not until later, in Saint-Remy and Auvers (1889-90), when he painted a few still lifes which were of an entirely different character, handling and peculiarities of style.  This Bouquet seems to be a singular instance when Van Gogh applied the rigors of his mature landscape style to a still-life subject.  It is most certainly a late work, made just shortly before his death, on July 29, 1890 in Auvers.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Shoes - 1888 (Click Image to Enlarge)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

Van Gogh painted several still lives of shoes or boots during his Paris period.  This picture, painted later in Aries, evinces a unique to the earlier motif.

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Roses 1890  (Click Image to Enlarge)

  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

In May, 1890, just before his departure from the asylum in Saint-Remy, Van Gogh painted an exceptional group of four still lifes, to which both the Museum's Roses and Irises Belong.  Striking in their bouquets and their counterparts - an upright composition of irises (Van gogh Museum Amsterdam) and a horizontal composition of roses (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) --were conceived as a decorative ensemble, like the suite of sunflowers he had made earlier in Arles.  Traces of pink along the tabletop and rose petals in the present painting, which have faded overtime, offer a faint reminder of the formerly vivid "canvas of pink roses against a yellow green background in a green vase."

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

Wheat Fields with cypresses (1889)

Writing to his brother, Theo, from the asylum in Saint Remy in early July 1889, Van Gogh described his latest work in the series he had begun in June: " I have a canvas of cypresses with some ears of wheat, some poppies, a blue sky like a piece of Scotch plaid, the former painted with a thick impasto... and the wheat field in the sun, which represents the extreme heat, very thick too."  Van Gogh regarded this sun-drenched landscape as one of his "best" summer canvases and repeated the composition three times: in a reed pen drawing (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and in two oil paintings made later that fall (National Gallery, London, and private collection).

Van Gogh - Metropolitan Museum of Art , NYC

La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle 1889)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York

Of the five versions of Van Gogh's portrait of Augustine Roulin, wife of his friend the postmaster of Arles, The present canvas is the one the sitter chose for herself, Van Gogh remarked that "she had a good eye and took the best."  He began the portraits just before his breakdown in Arles, in December 1888, and completed them in early 1889.  As he worked on the successive versions, the composition (which he titled La Berceuse, meaning "lullaby, or woman who rocks the cradle," indicated by the rope the sitter holds) took on added meaning.  As he revealed in his letters, the material image became the focus of literary and symbolic associations, ranging from the writings of Dutch and French novelists to the consoling music of Berhoz and Wagnet.  Van Gogh envisioned La Bercuse as the center of a triptych, flanked by Sunflowers, like candelabra.