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Landscape at Auvers in the Rain
Rain - Auvers
ArtistVincent van Gogh
Year1890
CatalogueF 811/JH 2096[1]
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions50 cm × 100 cm (19.685 in × 39.3701 in)
LocationNational Museum of Art, Cardiff, Wales

Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is an oil on canvas by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.

Painted in July, 1890, and completed just 3 days before his death, it depicts a landscape at Auvers-sur-Oise, where van Gogh spent the last year of his life. It is one of thirteen double-square canvases of landscapes around Auvers completed by van Gogh between 17 June and 27 July. The depiction of the rain with dark, diagonal lines are considered to be inspired by Japanese art, specifically the woodcuts of Utagawa Hiroshige.[2] It also displays the visceral relationship between nature and emotionality that is a trademark of van Gogh's later work, as well as the stylistic innovations of a raised horizon line, expressive brushstrokes, and increasing chromaticity. This was one of van Gogh's last paintings before his death. The painting was purchased by Gwendoline Davies in 1920 and donated to the National Museum of Art in Cardiff, Wales, as part of her bequest in 1952.[3][2]




Background[edit]

Vincent van Gogh became an artist at the age of 27, and continued with the profession for the next ten years, culminating with his suicide on July, 29, 1890 at the age of 37. Originally based in his home country of the Netherlands, van Gogh spent the last four years of life painting in France, where his greatest artistic innovation occurred. As his mental health, allegedly caused by an epileptic disorder, declined, van Gogh chose to enter a private asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence in the South of France. He spent fifteen months there, continuing to develop a distinct artistic style. Then, he moved to the small village of Auvers-sur-Oise in northern France, where he spent the last three months of his life before committing suicide.[4]

Van Gogh lived in Auvers from May to 27 July 1890.[4] In those seventy days, the artist painted over seventy works, enjoying his newfound autonomy after being institutionalized by producing art fanatically. His main correspondences were with his brother Theo van Gogh whom he wrote to in Paris, and Doctor Paul Gachet, a local homeopathic practitioner who was interested in Post-Impressionist art and kept an eye on the artist.[4] Despite his renewed freedom, his mental health continued to deteriorate, leading to his suicide. In the last two months of van Gogh’s life, the artist engaged in his “most daring stylistic experiments and freed himself from any remaining academic constraints, which had still hampered his work in the previous months”.[5] Notably, he painted twelve double-square canvases of the gardens and fields around Auvers in the last ten days of his life, which displayed some of his most innovative techniques in terms of color and composition. Landscape at Auvers in the Rain was part of this collection of works, which were likely meant to be a coherent series, and was painted within the last three days before his suicide.[2]

Development[edit]

Setting[edit]

Twenty miles northwest of Paris, Auvers was a popular artist colony “discovered” by Barbizon painter Charles-François Daubigny, who held residence there in the 1870s.[6] The village attracted those engaged in the Impressionist movement due to its tranquility and naturalism contrasting to its proximity to the capital city.[7] An influential art colony for 30 years, Auvers provided rich landscapes as well as a sharp contrast between the old, quaint cottages and new industrial features, such as the railroad.[7] In Auvers, van Gogh painted portraits, villages, and fields, focusing more on the natural beauty and provincial village life than the new mechanical innovations. Van Gogh largely edited out any signs of industrialization because he was “more interested in finding a new way of painting traditional motifs- whether through achieving a particular effect of light, or through the expressive use of color- than recording the encroachment of modern life”.[7] Therefore, in Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, van Gogh chose to focus on the old world charm of the village, from the shaped thatched roofs of the houses to the old cottages, and the natural beauty of Auvers, from the bustling meadows to the dark trees.

Environmentally, Auvers contrasted significantly with Souther France, leading van Gogh to develop new styles to convey his evolving relationship with the novel natural features of the land, reflecting the transition from the hot and dry climate of the South to the “cooler, rainy weather in the north that nourished gardens in Auver”.[8] The climate certainly inspired him to capture the falling rain for Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, but it also revived him on a spiritual level, as he wrote that in Auvers there was “beautiful greenery in abundance” and that it was “far enough from Paris… to be in the real countryside” with a sense of “well-being in the air”.[8] The new location also inspired shifts in artistic technique, as van Gogh explored a heightened palette of bright greens and yellows, expressive brushwork, and innovative compositions, creating some of his most daring works in his newfound location of ingenuity.[7]

Influences[edit]

Bridge in the rain (after Hiroshige), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1887, a source of inspiration for Landscape at Auvers in the Rain

For Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, van Gogh drew inspiration from both French and Japanese art, creating a distinctly personal style. Originally a “peasant painter” who emulated the Dutch greats, van Gogh shifted from dark, somber hues to embracing the vibrant colors of the Post-Impressionist movement.[4] Once he moved to France, van Gogh drew inspiration from the works of innovators such as Monet, Pissarro, and Seurat, and began to experiment with brushstroke and color, emulating the Impressionist and Pointillist styles in his paintings.[4] Importantly, van Gogh was heavily influenced by fellow Post-Impressionist artist Gauguin, who he connected with due to their “submission of nature to the expression of emotion in their works”.[9] Entering his Auvers period, van Gogh, due to his lack of self confidence and faltering faith in new artistic innovations, also sought inspiration from the older generation of French artists such as Delacroix, and Daubigny. In particular, his choice of of the double-square format was inspired by Daubigny, “who had a string predilection for canvases that were twice as wide as they were high, ideal for picturing sweeping landscapes”.[7] Due to Theo's extensive collection of Japanese art, Vincent was also highly influenced by art from Japan and the Japonisme style. In Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, van Gogh uses dark, diagonal strokes to represent rain, a technique directly influenced by the woodcut Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake by the Japanese artist Hiroshige, which he copied for training in 1887. Through his varied sources of inspiration, van Gogh "wanted somehow to combine past and present, North and South, Rembrandt and Delacroix, Europe and the Far East”.[6]

Composition[edit]

Van Gogh’s exploration of 50 cm × 100 cm (20 in × 39 in), double-square canvases allowed him to convey the fields surrounding Auvers with a greater sense of boundlessness. In his final letter to Theo he expressed that he was “quite absorbed in the immense plain with wheatfields against the hills” he found in Auvers, a sense of awe he wished to display in his paintings.[2] The artist created twelve landscapes of this size, but curiously, “van Gogh himself said nothing about why he began using these unusual formats" although "the paintings were probably envisioned as a series to be hung and exhibited together”.[6] Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is a primary example of how these large canvases afforded him an expanse to represent the immense stretches of wheatfields that engulfed the village. He engages the viewer by illustrating a high horizon line, creating a birds-eye view, but tilting the foreground so that one feels as if they are both within the grassy hills and looking above them simultaneously. The image has a limitless, panoramic depth due to the artist’s “diametrically opposed compositional approach, an exaggerated wide-angle effect from an elevated vantage point, giving a remarkably broad view over the landscape” revealing the payoff of van Gogh's experimentation with point of view.[9] Van Gogh’s use of perspective and cropping became bolder and more innovative as he progressed as an artist, especially noteworthy because Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is one of his final works, showing that he continued to evolve the entirety of his career. Fascinated with this striking perspective, graphic design researchers used digital analysis on Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, among other works from the artist’s Auvers period, determining that “in Auvers, van Gogh moved toward simplifying the composition, trading it for an increase in contrast and chromaticity”[10]. Therefore, the composition reveals both the emotional intensity of the landscape and van Gogh’s ever evolving artistic style by using a broad lens to envelop the viewer with the expressive colors and brush strokes conveying Auvers and its countryside. Although the composition is simple, its high horizon line allows for a broadness that swallows up the viewer, emotionally engaging them. Because the work is compositionally more broad and less descriptive, van Gogh was able to emphasize the emotionality of the landscape and his perception of it, rather than pictorial accuracy.

Analysis[edit]

Subject[edit]

Landscape of Auvers in the Rain portrays the town of Auvers as well as the wheatfields that surround it. Art Historians believe that van Gogh most likely created Auvers-Rain in a field near Méry-Sur-Oise, based on the angle that the Notre Dame d’Auvers appears at in the work.[11] The view looks at the village from the perspective of a trail that cuts through the cemetery and fields surrounding the town.[12] Notably, the houses of Auvers appear half sunken into the landscapes surrounding the town, emphasizing the natural world over the provincial town, as the buildings “rhyme with the diagonals of the hillsides outside their doors” bleeding into the pictorial countryside.[8] Furthermore, it is notable that van Gogh chose not to populate the town in this image, largely erasing any form of topography or narrative. This leaves the viewer with the saturated, abstracted features of the sky, hills, town, and fields without a context, forcing them to confront van Gogh’s intense brushstrokes and colors. However, critics note that “the loss of the particularity does not lead to mere pattern but to an unprecedented emphasis on the brute facts of the landscape and the viewer’s visceral relationship to it,”[8] revealing that by choosing to portray a town’s close relationship to nature through an expressive, abstracted perspective, van Gogh is able to create a more unique, emotionally-engaging landscape than if he merely copied Auvers for artistic accuracy.

Wheat Field with Crows, 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, shares a double square canvas and motifs with Landscape at Auvers in the Rain

Van Gogh used wheatfields as an important motif in Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, as “in these immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, he tried to express sadness and extreme loneliness, but at the same time how healthy fortifying the countryside was” in a sense combining his isolation and loneliness with the newfound freedom he found upon moving to Auvers.[7] Noami Margolis Maurer emphasizes spiritual and psychological resonance of van Gogh’s illustration of the storm, noting “van Gogh’s association of wheat with humanity [leads to] his vision of the endlessly rolling landscape as a manifestation of infinity and eternity… for him, these vast fields of grain represented the vulnerable existence of mankind, and the storm epitomized those fateful, uncontrollable, but passing catastrophes which sweep through people’s lives”.[13] Van Gogh's choice of subject matter reflects his own personal struggles with human catastrophe, as he battled mental illness and self doubt amidst his desire to create great art.[6] The crows fluttering upward toward the foreground of the image are also an important motif of van Gogh’s Auvers period, notably from the image, Wheatfield with Crows, presenting as an “object of approaching menace and anxiety whose swift advance signifies the fleeting passage of time and the inexorability of death”.[13] Therefore, the wheatfields and crows that surround the town have a deeper meaning, reflecting the cyclical nature of life, sadness, and death, important themes van Gogh contemplated throughout his career as an artist.

Artistic Style[edit]

For this piece, critics noted that van Gogh “celebrated the landscape in its own language, echoing the action of rain and wind, growth and decay, rather than observing the refined conventions of the Western painting tradition” revealing the artist's tendency to distort reality in favor of creating a more expressive representation of his personal feelings.[8] Characteristic of his Auvers period, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain has a richly saturated palette of brilliant yellows and purples and a boldly abbreviated form, abstracting the important motifs an images off of the landscape.[6] This simplification of form connects to the broader composition of the work, which emphasizes the natural and emotional aura of the landscape over exact replication. However, his briefness is also indicative of the artist’s “obsessive desire to produce” that came during his Auvers period, likely due to his newfound sense of freedom and autonomy after his institutionalization.[13] In a letter to his brother, van Gogh expressed how his move to Auvers impacted his stylistic choices, stating “I already feel that it did me good to go south, the better to see the north. It is as I thought, I see more violet hues wherever they are”.[13] Purples are particularly apparent in the shadowed areas of Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, where they “add a moving resonance to the landscapes and enhance the brilliance of the greens, yellows, and blues” as well as in the sky.[13] These coloristic choices and bold brushstrokes are characteristic of the Post-impressionist style, as this movement rejected the “concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color in favor of an emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content”.[4] Therefore, van Gogh's bold choices in color and brushwork are indicative of his evolving technique as an increasingly innovative, original artist.

Stylistically, van Gogh also emulated the Japonisme movement, or the French imitation of traditional Japanese art on Impressionism, in Landscape at Auvers in the Rain. Japanese art was known to appear decorative and stylized. Through Landscape at Auvers in the Rain’s striking birdseye view perspective, patterned areas of color, and rhythmic brushstrokes, van Gogh created this decorative effect.[7] In his depiction of the wheatfields in the painting, van Gogh uses abstraction and linear patterns rather than a naturalistic treatment of the earth, tying back to the adorned woodblock Japanese prints that he and Theo collected. Furthermore, Japanese prints typically emphasize contour and lack of perspective, emphasizing the patterned elements of an image, which corresponds to van Gogh’s choice to create a rhythmic portrayal of rain droplets, piercing the image. Notably, van Gogh took direct inspiration for this patterned conception of a storm from a print by Utagawa Hiroshige titled Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake. Hiroshige used vertical lines to create “a device which represents falling rain as multiple diagonal lines superimposed in the landscape”.[8] Using this highly stylized iteration of a downpour, van Gogh integrated concepts of Japonisme with French landscape art to produce a strikingly unique painting. To critics, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain has a “startling effect, which links [van Gogh] to his own past, to his passion for Japan, and to his continuing engagement with the brute elements''.[14]

Significance[edit]

It is important to note the proximity of just three days between the completion of Landscape at Auvers in the Rain with van Gogh's suicide, especially considering the theme of personal despair. Despite van Gogh's clear self agony, depression, and hopelessness, his painting also holds themes of hope and renewal, closely connected to the invigoration of spirit van Gogh felt when spending time outdoors.[13] Landscape at Auvers in the Rain expresses the relationship between nature and emotionality that is van Gogh’s signature form of expression, as he “imbued his landscapes with personal feelings… in his landscape paintings he wanted to express the emotions that nature evoked in him”.[7] The artist distorted reality to enhance the expression of his emotions in the work. The image’s lack of distinct subject matter and identifiability of Auvers connect to the image's goal of creating a relationship between nature and emotionality for viewers, as the strong us of colors and stylized forms rise above conveying features of the landscape and storm naturally. One critic notes that van Gogh’s true innovation with Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is his ability to create an expansive image that transforms a landscape into a metaphor itself, noting that even singular forms in the painting, such as the crows, “lift from the fields and are lost in the vegetation beyond the motifs and subject matter, and as in other paintings of the same format, the painting itself becomes the subject matter… the motif is literally drowned in painting”.[14] Through these stylistic choices, van Gogh urges the viewer to share in the intensity of his emotion and enter his own distorted expression of reality. Therefore, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain reflects how in the last period of van Gogh’s life, his paintings became bolder, more original, and progressively independent from the works of prior artists. This notion of creating a new type of landscape is reflected in his own words, as in a letter to Theo at the end of his life, he stated that he could “see from afar the possibility of a new painting” that expressed to audiences his core belief that “before such nature I feel powerless”.[8]

The rainy storm is central to the emotional expression thatLandscape at Auvers in the Rain aims to convey.  The layered, horizontal bands reflecting countryside are interrupted by the rain, which lashes down in great streaks across the canvas, creating a dramatic emotional impact.[7] Again, while these features are abstracted and stylized rather than naturalistic, they still maintain the sense of emotion the artist wished to convey, notably the cycle of human pain and suffering. Van Gogh himself associated the inevitable natural phenomena of rainstorms with the parallel inevitability of anguish throughout the human lifespan.[13] However, the painting is not simply an expression of hopelessness and despair. Van Gogh wrote to Theo that nature was a refuge from his troubles, and specifically, “when suffering is sometimes so great it fills the whole horizon that it takes on the proportions of a hopeless deluge… it is better to look at a wheat field, even in the form of a picture”.[13] In this sense, the painting also expresses how life goes on and continues amid such great despair. To certain critics, his use of the bright yellows to signify the wheat-filled countryside was a symbol of comfort for van Gogh amid his distress because “it embodied the ongoing process of life, the irrelevance of the individual's fate in the overall beauty and harmony of the divine order”.[13] To van Gogh, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain did not only convey a despair, but the restorative forces the artist felt when he was in the countryside, connected to nature.

Reception[edit]

While he did not find success during his lifetime, van Gogh's work became increasingly coveted after his tragic death. Encouraged by her art dealer Hugh Blaker, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain was bought by Gwendoline Davies in 1920 from the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris for £2,020 (equivalent to £86,321 in 2021). Davies and her sister, Margaret, inherited a fortune from their grandfather, David Davies, which they dedicated to amassing one of the largest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in Britain during the early twentieth century. Davies brought the painting to Wales, where it was displayed in the music room of her home, Gregynog Hall. Notably, the painting was almost purchased by Japanese art collector Koyata Yamamoto just a few prior, connecting to the piece's Japonisme elements.[12] The painting was donated to the National Museum of Art in Cardiff, Wales, as part of her bequest in 1952.[3][2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Martin Bailey; Frances Fowle (2006). Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors. National Galleries of Scotland. ISBN 978-1-903278-77-2.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Rain - Auvers". Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  3. ^ a b Oliver Fairclough (2007). 'Things of Beauty': What Two Sisters Did for Wales. National Museums & Galleries of Wales. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-7200-0581-3.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Uitert, Evert van (2003). "Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van". Grove Art Online. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T033020. ISBN 9781884446054. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
  5. ^ Schneede, Uwe M. (2019), "Auvers-sur-Oise 1890", Vincent van Gogh, Verlag C.H.BECK oHG, pp. 109–117, doi:10.17104/9783406736506-109, ISBN 978-3-406-73650-6, retrieved 18 November 2020
  6. ^ a b c d e Pickvance, Ronald (1986). Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers. New York City, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 030020325X.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Inspiring Impressionism : Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh. Taft Museum of Art,, National Galleries of Scotland,, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. [Edinburgh]. 2015. ISBN 978-1-906270-86-5. OCLC 922912086.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Van Gogh and nature. Kendall, Richard,, Heugten, Sjraar van,, Stolwijk, Chris,, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, Massachusetts. ISBN 978-1-935998-23-5. OCLC 905344252.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  9. ^ a b Uitert, Evert van (2003), "Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van", Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t033020, ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4, retrieved 18 November 2020
  10. ^ Putri, Tieta; Mukundan, Ramakrishnan; Neshatian, Kourosh (2017). "Artistic Style Characterization of Vincent Van Gogh's Paintings using Extracted Features from Visible Brush Strokes". Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods. SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications: 378–385. doi:10.5220/0006188303780385. ISBN 978-989-758-222-6.
  11. ^ Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. (2009). Vincent van Gogh : between earth and heaven : the landscapes. Blotkamp, Carel., Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel. Basel: Kunstmuseum Basel. ISBN 978-3-7204-0185-2. OCLC 421360828.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ a b Bailey, Martin, 1947- (2006). Van Gogh and Britain : pioneer collectors. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland. ISBN 978-1-903278-77-2. OCLC 63187108.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i Margolis Maurer, Naomi (1998). The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: The Thought and Art of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 1611471540.
  14. ^ a b Veen, Wouter van der. (2010). Van Gogh in Auvers : his last days. Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890., Knapp, Peter, 1931- (1st American ed.). New York: Monacelli Press. ISBN 978-1-58093-301-8. OCLC 503041939.
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