Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) - Evening Landscape with Rising Moon, 1889

 

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) - Evening Landscape with Rising Moon, 1889
oil on canvas, 92 x 72 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

The moon, the sun and the stars were important symbolic elements for Van Gogh who equated their radiating light to religious precepts surrounding the resurrection, redemption and salvation. In this painting the moon in brilliant yellow rises from behind the smoky blue Alpilles mountains, and radiates a light that he has evoked through multiple short strokes of white paint. His use of these short, regular, white strokes was fairly unusual for him, but gives the effect of the dappled moonlight playing across the landscape. 

There is great rhythm in this painting that is created through these very precise brushstrokes - every stroke of paint here has a function and builds towards the greater surface pattern across the canvas. His forms are very rounded from the stacks of wheat to the mountains, and this sense of 'roundness' and curvature was something that was characteristic of many of his later works. This painting was done in July 1889, which was when he made his first trip back to Arles from the asylum, and subsequently had his first serious breakdown in Saint-Remy. Via

Vincent Van Gogh - Moonlit Landscape (The Promenade, Evening), 1889

 

Vincent Van Gogh - Moonlit Landscape (The Promenade, Evening), 1889

Vincent van Gogh - Cypresses, 1889

 

Vincent van Gogh - Cypresses, 1889

Vincent Van Gogh - Country road in Provence by night, 1890

 

Vincent Van Gogh - Country road in Provence by night, 1890

Van Gogh paints Country road in Provence by night shortly before leaving the asylum at Saint-Rémy. This is not an existing landscape, but instead composed at his own discretion, presumably as a final reminder of Saint-Rémy and as a summary of the many impressions he acquired during his stay in Provence. Van Gogh experiments with his use of colour and brushwork in Saint-Rémy. Many works are composed of graceful forms and swirling lines. That is also the case here. The short, rhythmic wavy brushstrokes placed side by side give the painting great dynamism. via

Vincent Van Gogh - The Starry Sky, 1889

 

Vincent Van Gogh - The Starry Sky, 1889

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night during his 12-month stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, several months after suffering a breakdown in which he severed a part of his own ear with a razor. While at the asylum, he painted during bursts of productivity that alternated with moods of despair. 

At the asylum, van Gogh observed the night sky from his barred bedroom window and wrote a letter to Theo describing a magnificent view of the morning star very early one morning in the summer of 1889. Because he was not allowed to paint in his bedroom, he painted the scene from memory or possibly drawings and used his imagination for the small village that did not actually exist.

The oil-on-canvas painting is dominated by a night sky roiling with chromatic blue swirls, a glowing yellow crescent moon, and stars rendered as radiating orbs. One or two cypress trees, often described as flame-like, tower over the foreground to the left, their dark branches curling and swaying to the movement of the sky that they partly obscure. Amid all this animation, a structured village sits in the distance on the lower right of the canvas. Straight controlled lines make up the small cottages and the slender steeple of a church, which rises as a beacon against rolling blue hills. The glowing yellow squares of the houses suggest the welcoming lights of peaceful homes, creating a calm corner amid the painting’s turbulence. via