Would Van Goghs Olive Trees Be Considered Textured Art

Painting series past Vincent van Gogh

The Olive Copse
Artist	Vincent van Gogh
Year	1889
Catalogue	F712 JH1740
Medium	Oil on canvass
Dimensions	92 cm × 72.5 cm (36.2 in × 28.five in)
Location	Museum of Modern Art[ane], New York, NY

Vincent van Gogh painted at to the lowest degree fifteen paintings of olive copse, generally in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889. At his own request, he lived at an asylum at that place from May 1889 through May 1890 painting the gardens of the asylum and, when he had permission to venture outside its walls, nearby olive trees, cypresses and wheat fields.

Ane painting, Olive Copse in a Mountainous Landscape, was a complement to The Starry Night.

The olive tree paintings had special significance for van Gogh. A group in May 1889 represented life, the divine and the cycle of life while those from November 1889 arose out of his attempt to symbolize his feelings about Christ in Gethsemane. His paintings of olive pickers demonstrate the relationship between man and nature by depicting ane of the cycles of life, harvesting or death. They also convey an instance of how individuals, through communion with nature, can connect with the divine.

Van Gogh constitute respite and relief in interaction with nature. When the serial of olive tree paintings was made in 1889 he was subject to illness and emotional turmoil, yet the paintings are considered to be among his finest works.

Saint-Rémy [edit]

View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint Remy, 1889
Formerly Drove of Elizabeth Taylor (F803)

In May 1889, Van Gogh voluntarily entered the asylum^[ii] of St. Paul^[3] about Saint-Rémy in Provence.^[iv] At that place he had access to an next cell he used as his studio. He was initially confined to the immediate asylum grounds and painted (without the window bars) the world he saw from his room, such as ivy covered copse, lilacs, and irises in the garden.^{[two] [5]} As he ventured outside of the asylum walls, he painted the wheat fields, olive groves, and cypress copse in the surrounding countryside,^[v] which he saw as "characteristic of Provence." Over the course of the year, he painted about 150 canvases.^[2]

The imposed regimen of asylum life gave van Gogh a hard-won stability: "I feel happier here with my piece of work than I could be outside. By staying hither a expert long fourth dimension, I shall take learned regular habits and in the long run the result will be more order in my life."^[five] While his time at Saint-Rémy forced him to manage his vices, such as coffee, booze, poor eating habits and periodic attempts to swallow turpentine and pigment, his stay was not ideal. He needed to obtain permission to leave the asylum grounds. The food was poor; he more often than not ate just bread and soup. His only apparent form of treatment were ii-hr baths twice a week. During his year there, van Gogh had periodic attacks, possibly due to a grade of epilepsy.^{[half dozen]} Past early on 1890, when the attacks worsened, he concluded that his stay at the asylum was not helping him to recover, which led him to movement to Auvers-sur-Oise just north of Paris in May 1890.^[vii]

Olive trees as a subject [edit]

Painting the countryside, the surrounding fields, cypress trees and olive trees restored van Gogh's connection to nature through art.^[viii] He completed at least xv paintings in 1889^[9] of "venerable, gnarled olive trees," pervasive throughout southern France,^[ten] of which he wrote:

Olive Copse in Provence, France

The effect of daylight and the sky means there are endless subjects to be found in olive trees. For myself I look for the contrasting furnishings in the foliage, which changes with the tones of the sky. At times, when the tree bares its pale blossoms and large blue flies, emerald fruit beetles and cicadas in slap-up numbers fly about, everything is immersed in pure blue. And so, as the bronzer leafage takes on more mature tones, the sky is radiant and streaked with green and orange, so again, further into autumn, the leaves accept on violet tones something of the color of a ripe fig, and this violet outcome manifests itself virtually fully with the contrast of the large, whitening sun within its pale halo of light lemon. Sometimes, also, after a shower I've seen the whole sky pink and orange, which gave an exquisite value and coloring to the silver grayness-greens. And among all this were women, also pink, who were gathering the fruit.^[11]

He found olive trees, representative of Provence, both "demanding and compelling." He wrote to his brother Theo that he was "struggling to grab (the olive trees). They are old silver, sometimes with more blue in them, sometimes greenish, bronzed, fading white above a soil which is xanthous, pink, violet tinted orangish... very hard." He plant that the "rustle of the olive grove has something very secret in it, and immensely old. It is too cute for usa to dare to pigment it or to be able to imagine information technology."^[9]

Spiritual significance [edit]

Equally a immature man, van Gogh considered pursuing ministry building to serve working people.^{[12] [13]} He studied for a time in the Netherlands just his zeal and self-imposed asceticism price him a curt-term position in lay ministry. He became somewhat embittered and rejected the church institution, yet found a personal spirituality that was comforting and important to him.^[13] By 1879, he fabricated a shift in the direction of his life and found he could express his "love of God and human being" through painting.^[12]

Van Gogh painted nature, the major subject for his works in the last 29 months of his life, to bring relief from his illnesses and emotional distress.^[14] Prior to this period he had rejected what he perceived as the narrow religion of his parents, and took an near nihilistic stance, not unlike Nietzsche's, toward religion and God.^[15] It was among the blossoming copse, the olive orchards and fields that van Gogh most often found "profound significant", because he saw in their cycles an analogy to human life. He wrote to Theo that expiry, happiness and unhappiness are "necessary and useful" and relative, declaring "Even faced with an disease that breaks me up and frightens me, that conventionalities is unshaken."^[7]

The autumn work was somewhat in reaction to the recent compositions of Christ in the Garden of Olives by his friends Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard.^[18] Frustrated by their piece of work which he qualified with the words "nothing was observed", Van Gogh painted "in the groves, morning and evening during these clear, cold days, but in beautiful, vivid sunshine" resulting in five canvases above the three he completed earlier in the twelvemonth.^[nineteen] He wrote to his brother, Theo, "What I have done is a rather difficult and coarse reality beside their abstractions, merely it will have a rustic quality and will smell of the globe."^[18] Rather than attempting to recreate what the scene might have been like,^[nineteen] he explained "one tin can express anguish without making reference to the actual Gethsemane, and... at that place is no demand to portray figures from the Sermon on the Mountain in order to express a gentle and comforting feeling."^[12] He besides commented: "I shall not paint a Christ in the Garden of Olives, but shall paint the olive harvest as one might see it today, and past giving the human figure its proper place in it, 1 might perhaps be reminded of information technology."^{[12] [20]}

Assay [edit]

Artistic style [edit]

Van Gogh's early works were made with dull, grayness colors.^[21] In Paris, he met leading French artists Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat and others who provided illuminating influences on the use of color and technique. His work, previously somber and dark, now "blazed with color." Indeed, van Gogh's utilize of color became so dramatic that he was sometimes called an Expressionist. But it was southern France that provided an opportunity for him to limited his "surging emotions."^[22] Aware by the furnishings of its sun-drenched countryside, van Gogh reported that higher up all, his work "promises color".^[23] This is where he began development of his masterpieces.^[22]

Van Gogh captured the colors and moods of the trees which varied dramatically by daylight and season.^[eleven] He began to use the color blue to represent the divine. In both The Starry Night and his olive tree paintings, van Gogh used the intense blue of the sky to symbolize the "divine and infinite presence" of Jesus. Seeking a "modernistic artistic language" to stand for the divine, he sought a numinous quality in many of his olive tree paintings, such as by bathing olive copse, an emblem for Jesus, in "radiant gold light".^[24]

Van Gogh used the Impressionist concept of cleaved colour to requite light to a piece of work, innovatively drawing in color, giving the painting light and form, as he also did in his paintings of plowed fields, mountains, rocks, and heads and figures.^[25] The serial is unified by a more refined approach, without the thick application of paint to which he was more accustomed.^[18]

Meaning [edit]

The National Gallery of Art summarizes this series:

In the olive trees — in the expressive power of their ancient and gnarled forms — van Gogh institute a manifestation of the spiritual strength he believed resided in all of nature. His brushstrokes make the soil and even the sky seem live with the same rustling motion as the leaves, stirred to a shimmer by the Mediterranean current of air. These strong individual dashes do non seem painted so much as fatigued onto the sheet with a heavily loaded brush. The free energy in their continuous rhythm communicates to us, in an nigh physical manner, the living strength that van Gogh found within the copse themselves, the very spiritual forcefulness that he believed had shaped them.^[ix]

Skye Jethani, author of The Divine Article: Discovering a Faith Across Consumer Christianity, asserts that in many of his paintings, the olive tree serial in item, van Gogh conveys the redemptive quality of sorrow and that even in sorrow, there tin can be rejoicing. To quote van Gogh's sermon of 1876:

Sorrow is better than joy... for past the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. Our nature is sorrowful, only for those who accept learnt and are learning to look at Jesus Christ, there will always exist reason to rejoice. It is a good word, that of St. Paul: equally being sorrowful yet too rejoicing.^[26]

The paintings [edit]

In his letters, van Gogh specified two groupings: three paintings fabricated in June 1889 and five completed past late November 1889.^{[12] [18]} In that location was also a painting in September,^[27] three olive picker paintings in Dec^{[12] [28]} and a few others. Van Gogh made several drawings of olive copse when, as a precautionary safety mensurate, he did non take access to his paints.

Complement to The Starry Night [edit]

Of Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Vincent wrote his brother Theo: "I did a landscape with olive copse and also a new study of a starry sky," calling this painting the daylight complement to the nocturnal, The Starry Night. His intention was to go beyond "the photographic and silly perfection of some painters" to an intensity born of color and linear rhythms.^[29]

Within the painting, twisted green olive copse stand earlier the foothills of the Alps and underneath the heaven with an "ectoplasmic" cloud. Later, when the pictures had dried, he sent both of them to Theo in Paris, noting: "The olive trees with the white cloud and the mountains behind, too every bit the rise of the moon and the nighttime effect, are exaggerations from the point of view of the general arrangement; the outlines are accentuated equally in some old woodcuts."^[29]

Olive pickers [edit]

Van Gogh painted three versions of women picking olives. The first (F654) he described every bit an on-the-spot written report "in deeper tones from nature".^[12] The second painting (F655)^[12] is "the most resolved and stylized of the three," intended for his sister and female parent, is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art in New York City.^[thirty]

The 3rd, in the Chester Dale drove at the National Gallery of Fine art, Washington, DC (F656)^[9] he painted in his studio in December in a "very discreet color scheme".^[12] Although the subject of the painting is immediately articulate, the first tree, like a stepping stone, leads the spectator into the scene.^[28] Here van Gogh was more concerned well-nigh emotional and spiritual reality than literal interpretation. The women harvest olives for sustenance. The way in which the copse seem to wrap around the women and the trees and the landscape are virtually i, indicates an emotional bail and interdependence between nature and people.^[10]

Another painting was made of olive pickers, this time a couple. Kröller-Müller Museum's Olive Grove with Ii Olive Pickers (F587) was painted December, 1889.^[31]

Olive Orchard with a Human and a Woman Picking Fruit
December 1889
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands (F587)

Painted in May and June 1889 [edit]

Van Gogh fabricated four paintings in May and June 1889. The starting time, Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon (F704) is located at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.^[32]

Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon
May 1890
49.five ten 45.v
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (F704)

Van Gogh identified three olive tree paintings fabricated in June, the 2nd month of his stay at the asylum.^{[12] [18]}

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's Olive Orchard (F715) was expressed by van Gogh in a letter of July 1889 equally an orchard of olive copse with gray leaves, "their violet shadows lying on the sunny sand." By contrast, the shadows accentuate the rut of the Provençal sun. The "repetitive, rectangular castor strokes" convey an energy that heightens the emotional impact of this piece of work.^[33] In November 2017, the remains of a dead grasshopper was discovered in the painting, presumed to accept arrived already deceased while painting in the outdoors.^[34]

Van Gogh Museum's Olive Copse: Brilliant Blue Sky (F709) of absurd, blue daylight tones is like to Göteborgs Museum of Art's Olive Grove, a study in warm autumn colors. The autumn toned painting met van Gogh'due south goal of achieving a "harsh and coarse" realism to his work. He presented the painting to his friend and doctor, Dr. Gachet, with whom he would exist nether care and supervision in Auvers-sur-Oise the post-obit twelvemonth.^[35]

The Kröller-Müller Museum Olive Orchard (F585) was painted in June, 1889.^[36]

Olive Trees: Bright Blue Sky
June 1889
45.5 x 59.v cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (F709)

Painted in September, Nov and Dec 1889 [edit]

The paintings made during this period were much the artistic event of van Gogh'due south reaction to the Gauguin and Bernard Gethsemane painting, every bit mentioned in the "Spiritual significance" section.^{[19] [37]}

The intense nature of National Gallery of Scotland's Olive Trees (F714) probable expresses Van Gogh's agitated state of mind when he completed this work, dramatic impact evidenced both through his brushstrokes and colour use.^[37]

Contrasting with his June olives with their blueish-green color and coolness of tone,^[38] the vibrant oranges and yellows in Olive Trees with Yellowish Sky and Sun (F710) evoke the fall season.^[iii] Novelist Warren Keith Wright visited this painting at the Minneapolis Institute of Art over a 15-year period, transfixed by the painting, but unsure why. He came to realize that the fascination was that the painting represented ii periods of time. The late-afternoon sun lies due west above the mountains. The shadows, though, slant from the left, or the southwest, where they would autumn in autumn. Not only is the painting out of sync with time, it is besides out of sync with the season. It "predicts its own future, reverts to its own past."^[39]

Olive Trees
September 1889
Individual Collection (F711)

In November or December 1889 Van Gogh worked on Olive Orchard, MoMA (F708). Some other painting from this time is Olive Grove: Orange Heaven (F586) which resides at the Göteborgs Museum of Fine art, Gothenburg, Sweden.^[35]

Olive Trees Against a Slope of a Hill
November–Dec 1889
33.5 ten 40.0 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F716)

The White Cottage Amid the Olive Trees
December 1889
70 x 60
Individual collection (F664)

Landscape with Olive Tree and Mountains in the Background
December 1889
45 x 55 cm
Private Drove (F663)

References [edit]

1. ^ "The Olive Trees". The Drove. Museum of Mod Art. Retrieved twenty February 2012.
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History". Thematic Essay, Vincent van Gogh. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2000–2011. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
3. ^ ^{a b} "Olive Trees, 1889, van Gogh". Drove. Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Archived from the original on September viii, 2012. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
4. ^ "Olive Copse, 1889, van Gogh". Collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2000–2011. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
5. ^ ^{a b c} "The Therapy of Painting". Van Gogh Museum. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
6. ^ Wallace (1969). The World of Van Gogh (1853-1890) . Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books. pp. 139–146.
7. ^ ^{a b} Edwards, C (1989). Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest. Chicago: Loyola University Press. p. 113. ISBN0-8294-0621-2.
8. ^ Mancoff, D (1999). Van Gogh's Flowers. London: Frances Lincoln Express. p. 20. ISBN978-0-7112-2908-2.
9. ^ ^{a b c d} "The Olive Garden, 1889". Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. 2011. Archived from the original on May 10, 2011. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
10. ^ ^{a b} "Vincent van Gogh Education Programme". Education. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Archived from the original on October 8, 2012. Retrieved March 26, 2011.
11. ^ ^{a b} Van Gogh, V; Suh, H. (2006). Vincent van Gogh: A Self-Portrait in Art and Messages. New York: Black Canis familiaris & Leventhal Publishers. p. 294. ISBN9781579125868.
12. ^ ^{a b c d east f thousand h i j} Leeuw, R (1997) [1996]. van Crimpen, H; Berends-Albert, K (eds.). The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London and other locations: Penguin Books.
13. ^ ^{a b} Wallace (1969). The World of Van Gogh (1853-1890) . Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books. pp. 12–15.
14. ^ Edwards, C (1989). Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest. Chicago: Loyola Academy Press. p. 103. ISBN0-8294-0621-2.
15. ^ Edwards, C (1989). Van Gogh and God: A Artistic Spiritual Quest. Chicago: Loyola University Press. p. 70. ISBN0-8294-0621-ii.
16. ^ "Émile Bernard Christ in the Garden of Olives". Indianapolis Museum of Art. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
17. ^ Margolis Maurer, Naomi. "The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: Idea and Fine art of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin". Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8386-3749-three
18. ^ ^{a b c d e} SAS. "Europe 1700-1900" (PDF). The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and JSTOR: 46. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
19. ^ ^{a b c} Nordenfalk, C (2006). The Life and Piece of work of Van Gogh. New York: Philosophical Library. p. 177. ISBN9781428657250.
20. ^ Silverman, Debora. Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art p.311 Retrieved May ix, 2011
21. ^ Lubin, A (1996) [1972]. Stranger on the World: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh. U.s.a.: Da Capo Press. pp. 74–75. ISBN0-306-80726-2.
22. ^ ^{a b} H. W. Janson (1971). "The Modern World". A Basic History of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams. p. 308. ISBN0-xiii-389296-4.
23. ^ Morton, M; Schmunk, P (2000). The Arts Entwined: Music and Painting in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 177–178. ISBN0-8153-3156-viii.
24. ^ Erickson, K (1998). At Eternity'southward Gate: The Spiritual Vision Of Vincent van Gogh . Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdsmans Publishing. pp. 82, 149. ISBN9780802849786.
25. ^ Du Quesne-van Gogh, Due east (1913). Personal Recollections of Vincent van Gogh. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 16.
26. ^ Jethani, South (2009). The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Across Consumer Christianity. 1000 Rapids, MI: Zondervan (eBook). ISBN978-0-310-57422-4.
27. ^ "Olive Copse". Van Gogh Saint-Rémy paintings. Van Gogh Gallery. Retrieved March 27, 2011This site is sanctioned by the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam, The Netherlands {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
28. ^ ^{a b} Poore, H (1976) [1967 by Sterling Publishing, NY]. Composition in Fine art. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. p. 36. ISBN9780486233581.
29. ^ ^{a b} "Olive Trees, June–July 1889". Painting and Sculpture, Vincent van Gogh. Museum of Modern Art. 2010. Retrieved March 25, 2011The text on the folio is referenced to The Museum of Mod Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Fine art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 34 {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
30. ^ "Women Picking Olives". Collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2000–2011. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
31. ^ "Olive Grove with Ii Olive Pickers". Collection. Kröller-Müller Museum. Archived from the original on July 22, 2011. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
32. ^ "Passeio ao Crepúsculo (Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon)". Arte Francesa (French Art). Museu de Arte de São Paulo. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
33. ^ "Olive Orchard". Collections. Nelson Atkins Museum of Fine art. 2010. Archived from the original on February 6, 2011. Retrieved March 26, 2011.
34. ^ Campbell, Matt (November six, 2017). "For 128 years, bug stuck in Van Gogh'south painting went unnoticed". The Kansas Metropolis Star . Retrieved 9 November 2017.
35. ^ ^{a b} "Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy, 1889". Collection. Gõteborg, Sweden: Göteborgs Museum of Art. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
36. ^ "Olive Grove". Collection. Kröller-Müller Museum. Archived from the original on July 22, 2011. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
37. ^ ^{a b} "Olive Copse, 1889". National Gallery of Scotland. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
38. ^ Pickvance, Ronald (1986). Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 160. ISBN978-0-87099-477-7.
39. ^ Elkins, James (2004). Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Take Cried in Front of Paintings. London: Routledge. p. 134. ISBN0-415-97053-ix.

Bibliography [edit]

• Du Quesne-van Gogh, Eastward (1913). Personal Recollections of Vincent van Gogh. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Edwards, C (1989). Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest. Chicago: Loyola Academy Printing. ISBN 0-8294-0621-2.
• Elkins, James (2004). Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-97053-9.
• Erickson, K (1998). At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision Of Vincent van Gogh. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdsmans Publishing.
• Jethani, S (2009). The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan (eBook). ISBN 978-0-310-57422-4.
• Leeuw, R (1997) [1996]. van Crimpen, H, Berends-Albert, Thousand. ed. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London and other locations: Penguin Books.
• Mancoff, D (1999). Van Gogh's Flowers. London: Frances Lincoln Limited. ISBN 978-0-7112-2908-2.
• Nordenfalk, C (2006). The Life and Piece of work of Van Gogh. New York: Philosophical Library.
• Poore, H (1976) [1967 by Sterling Publishing, NY]. Composition in Art. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
• Silverman, Debora, (2000) Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-28243-1.
• Stoesz, D (2010). Glimpses of Grace: Reflections of a Prison Clergyman. Victoria, BC: Friesen Printing. ISBN 978-1-77067-179-9.
• Van Gogh, Five; Suh, H. (2006). Vincent van Gogh: A Self-Portrait in Fine art and Letters. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.
• Wallace (1969). Editors of Time-Life Books. ed. The World of Van Gogh (1853–1890). Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books.

External links [edit]

• Van Gogh, paintings and drawings: a special loan exhibition, a fully digitized exhibition itemize from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on these paintings (encounter index)
• [1] A Grasshopper Has Been Stuck in This ("Olive Copse") van Gogh Painting for 128 Years - The New York Times eleven/x/2017

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Trees_%28Van_Gogh_series%29

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