“Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” at the National Gallery - Pt 3 Which are you favourites?

Note: This is the 3rd final part of my personal write-up of the London National Gallery’s Van Gogh exhibition. See here for Part 1 and Part 2.

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Sunflowers - 1888 (London)

Incredible.  So uplifting and cheerful .

Photos doesn’t do this painting justice. It was part of a series of on a beautiful everyday subject that Van Gogh found alluring.

It looks like a simple painting (and it is) - but there is a life-force and meaning behind it - which I think is why people are drawn to it.

I believe this particular one was painted for Gauguin? (who really admired it). They reflect a warmth in Van Gogh’s yearning for companionship in Arles, which he called “the Japan of the South.” It feels happy.

Van Gogh sculpted these sunflowers out of paint. They protrude off the canvas and the petals are in different stages of wilt and decay.

The texture of the seeds is just magical.

I’m fascinated by the smidgen of reflective white.

Why emblazon the vaze with his forename: emphatic pride?

Beautiful long dash-like brushstrokes for petals.

Heavy thick seeds of various colours spiralling within the flowers.

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Sunflowers - 1889 (Philadelphia)

Another WOW !

Love it.

Sunflowers are Van Gogh’s stars. A celebration of life and nature - almost like a sun-god. 

Not at all realistic - but super thick brushstrokes which makes them seem alive.

His bold colours and expressive way of painting are his signature hallmarks.

The background creates an even greater contrast which makes the yellow brighter - as if it glows.

Thick brushstrokes. Heavy and messy, energy.

The reddish hue captures the full gamut of life.

Interesting red centre. More colours here than the first one.

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Field with Poppies - 1889

Beautiful and charming.

Van Gogh was painting the landscape at St-Remy.

Beautiful patchwork of fields with red poppies.

Painted partly outdoors. Van Gogh embellished 2 houses and cypresses.

A little yellow home by the cypress and striking patches of poppies.

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Road Menders at Saint-Rémy - 1889

Wow. So v. beautiful.

I love the whirling chalkiness, the swirling creaminess. 

The trees are incredible - marble luster pearliness. I love the golden-chrome leaves flaming-like at the top of the painting.

I’m fascinated by the people - a lady with a shopping basket, two men pushing a cart up the pathway, two ladies walking under a lampost. 

Such a great lamppost. Thick impasto.

Two men (?) lifting a box?

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Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier) - 1888

Captivating portrait.

The way he gazes out at us, the intensity, the profusion of deep & dazzling colours ....

This man (“Patience Escalier”) was a gardener Van Gogh knew. Van Gogh was convinced he could transform him into the quintessential peasant.

I love the contrasting background and the sheer force of the colours.

It feel daring and beyond post-impressionism.

Sunburnt cheeks and nose?

The harvest, the golden sunshine of the worker?

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La Berceuse (“The Lullaby”) - 1889

Moving and quite beautiful.

This lady was Augustine Roulin. Van Gogh also knew her husband postman Joseph Roulin. 

As Jonathan Jones explains: they typified the warm, hardworking and charming working-class family. As he goes on to explain:

This visionary portrait seems to rock soothingly, moving towards the viewer, creating a sense of completeness and inclusion. The rope Roulin holds, to rock a baby’s cradle, reaches towards the viewer, making you the loved and guarded infant.

Van Gogh hoped La Berceuse would be seen and felt by the poor and the “broken-hearted”. He said it was a picture that might console fishermen far out at sea in a storm. Instead of being thrown about by the ocean, they would feel they were being rocked in a cradle and remember their own childhood lullabies.

Mme Roulin looking out at us - as if reassuring us.

Her golden face fitting into the ornate flowery background.

“La Berceuse” ... and contrasting decorative wallpaper.

As if comets of white flowers around the sun.

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Oleanders - 1888

Exquisite.  So absorbing.

The beguiling wild flowers grew in Van Gogh’s “poet’s garden”. For him, it was associated with love and passion.

It is a variant of his Sunflowers on a different theme. The green background perhaps symbolising fecundity? 

Novel by Émile Zola’s novel “La joie de vivre” ...

AKA: The Bright Side of Life. A romantic optimistic novel.

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Still Life with Coffee Pot - 1888

Wow.

I found this still life really engrossing.

A harmonious and relaxing conjunction of blues and yellow/golds.

Note how Van Gogh painted a red frame onto the canvass. I.e. 2 frames.

Love the darker-blue shadowing effect around the lemons.

What incredible lemons. My god. Citron-yellow glory.

The shades of blue creating table-cloth texture.

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The Stevedores - 1888

Truly WOW.

One of my favourites.

Van Gogh’s expressive use of colours is incredible.

At the museum, I gasped a little at the evening-like lambent atmosphere to the painting - captured inadequately by my camera.

An incredible painting saluting Hokusai, as van Gogh wrote to Theo:

I saw a magnificent and very strange effect this evening. A very large boat laden with coal on the Rhône, moored at the quay. Seen from above it was all glistening and wet from a shower; the water was a white yellow and clouded pearl-grey, the sky lilac and an orange strip in the west, the town violet. On the boat, small workmen, blue and dirty white, were coming and going, carrying the cargo ashore. It was pure Hokusai.

Painting on fire.

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The Trinquetaille Bridge - 1888

The modern life along the riverscape.

Interesting use of Japanese perspective. Expressive use of colours - the sky, the waves, the people ...

It’s a rather sad painting. It was recently sold by Christie’s:

In Le Pont de Trinquetaille the young men lounging by the wall are described by Van Gogh as “ruffians of the Rue du bout d’Arles”. This was his euphemism for pimps, since Rue du bout d’Arles was the centre of the city’s red-light district. Six months later, Van Gogh would deliver part of his severed ear to a woman in this street.

The most mysterious element in Le Pont de Trinquetaille is the sketchily painted figure of the girl in the foreground. Her blue dress, composed of flicks of paint, gives her an almost transparent and rather ghost-like appearance. She lacks facial features and her right hand placed on her forehead is a pose suggestive of melancholia.

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The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles - 1889

Stunning.

The springtime greenery. 

In this hospital, van Gogh was given a studio. He fills the details with emotion.

Wonderful welter of flowery dabs and spatters.

A dark (and characteristic) contorted tree branch.

Darker hues for darker emotions.

Is that van Gogh striding along in his hat by potted trees? 

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View of Arles, Flowering Orchards - 1889

Another lovely painting.

Beautiful for its (1) innovative perspective with 3 cropped poplars at the fore ... and (2) rich and detailed interwoven textures and colours.

And again, the wonderful swirling veneer of creaminess to the canopy; and an enchanting view of Arles on the distant skyline.

The landscape looks like clouds of marshmallows or green lakes?

Always the worker in the painting.

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The Arlésienne - 1890 (version 1)

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The Arlésienne - 1890 (version 2)

Iconic. I love the pose too.

This lady is Marie Ginoux. Van Gogh painted 5 versions of this lady who ran the local cafe.

She typified the charm of the Arlésienne Provencal dark-haired beauty.

Book of Charles Dickens.

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Landscape with Ploughman - 1889

Capturing the intensity of the autumn - a low but warm sun, ploughman with long shadows, poppies at the fore.

Van Gogh’s view from his hospital room.

I find this painting a bit dark, dispirited.

The shadows of the horse, the plowed row, and that glowing sun.

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Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant) - 1889

Harsh painting.

Van Gogh described this painting as “nothing but rough ground and rocks, with a thistle and dry grass in a corner, and a little violet and yellow man”.

Thick impasto colour mishmash on mountain and plume of clouds.

Barren landscape.

Lonely.

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Landscape from Saint-Rémy (Wheatfield behind St-Paul Hospital) - 1889

The brushstrokes off the grass create the windswept impression, and that enormous hovering cloud dominates the top.

This was painted after a storm.

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A Wheatfield with Cypresses - 1889

Another WOW!!!

The combined aesthetic stylisations are breathtaking - curving landscape, the striking and dancing cypresses, the contrasts of fundamental colours (blue-green-gold), and the mass strokes of brilliant swirls and ripples of paint.

Van Gogh captures the summer windswept landscape at the foot of the Alpilles mountains in dramatic fashion.

Golden waves and curls of the windswept wheat - like the surface of the sea.

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The Olive Trees - 1889

A rhythmic stylisation of the earth (with its olives trees) at the Alpilles.

I love how van Gogh always makes his trees dance.

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Olive Trees - 1889

Wow.

I get that wonderful Mediterranean feeling.

This painting was made immediately after the one above.

I love the magical sun with its waves of warmth radiating outwards. The abstracted landscape with olive trees and purple shadows against the browny-soil earth.

The land resembles the surface of water of a lake.

I love his colourisation and that sun is sublime.

Golden.

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Mountains at Saint-Rémy - 1889

Reminds me of Cezanne.

An abstracted & rather invented landscape. Use of heavy black outlines though ...

Sunflowers make an appearance by the hut.

Cloudy sky of thining blue strokes.

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Olive Trees - 1889

Love it.

Another olive tree painting — this time the ground seems to swirl and move, like the surface of the sea.

The shaking and rippling shadows on the meandering ivory earth.

Curious orange embellishment on the olive tree.

Nothing is “too much” for van gogh. 

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Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy - 1889

Love it. Just magical.

I absolutely love the prismal kaleidoscopic sky which is burning with life. The sky flecked with wisps of blue and red clouds. They seem to be swimming in the sky. And the sky hitting the canopy and rebounding with blue sparks on its surface.

The dancing olive trees casting violet-blue shadows on the auburn-browny earth.

Just so good.

Two trees cavorting? Delicate yellows fruits, are olives yellow?

A whale swimming in the sky?

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Olive Grove with Two Olive Pickers - 1889

The same composition as above — but with olive pickers added.

Still beautiful - but I prefer the one above.

The woman is smiling, and the man with his orange

basket hanging on a nearby branch.

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Tree Trunks in the Grass - 1890

Another WOOW!

In contrast to the sadness he felt at St-Remy hospital grounds, here Van Gogh gives us the joy and hope of spring.

An embellished and blooming meadow brimming with the joie de vivre.

I love his dappled versicoloured branches.

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Long Grass with Butterflies - 1890

Beautiful and so uplifting.

Once again, Van Gogh captures the spark of burgeoning life.

Butterflies can be made out among the flowers, shrubs, saplings, and grass of the meadow.