This painting is Van Gogh's copy of a painting by François Millet. Over the years, the colours have changed. The colour contrasts were originally much stronger, but it is now a bluish-green landscape.
🌻 Vincent van Gogh, Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet) (1890)
Van Gogh didn’t choose sunflowers as the subject for his paintings and drawings by chance. He thought they communicated gratitude. Vincent wanted to make ‘consolatory art for distressed hearts’. Sunflowers have become synonymous with Vincent. 🌻
Under the blazing sun, his easel fixed into the ground with an iron peg, in the middle of the wheatfields surrounding Arles. The horizon is very high; was Vincent sitting on a low stool? Or on his knees?
🌻 Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield (1888)