Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 – 1890), Farmhouse in Provence, 1888, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection 1970.17.34 This deceptively peaceful summer scene actually bristles with energy! Van Gogh painted this in Arles, in the south of France where he tried to escape modern life and re-discover a simpler, brighter world.
We’ll find out how the actions of an American admiral in a country on the other side of the globe led to one of the biggest artistic influences that Europe–and Vincent–had ever experienced.
Here’s an example of the woodblock prints I mention that had such a powerful impact on Western art.
And? Hiroshige (Japanese 1797-1858), T?to meguro yuhhigaoka / Hiroshige ga, 1858 SHOW NOTES
“A Long Look” theme is “Ascension” by Ron Gelinas youtu.be/jGEdNSNkZoo
Episode theme is “Sonatine – II. Mouvement de Menuet” composed by Maurice Ravel. Performed by Markus Staab. Courtesy of musopen.org.
https://musopen.org/music/4724-sonatine/
Farmhouse in Provence information
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.52178.html
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.52178.html#relatedpages
Japanese influence on Western art
Japonisme?: Japanese Reflections in Western Art. Sunderland, England: Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, 1986. Print.
Put, Max., Sichel, Philippe., and Koechlin, Raymond. Plunder and Pleasure?: Japanese Art in the West, 1860-1930 . Leiden: Hotei Pub., 2000. Print.
Vincent van Gogh and Japan. Tokyo: TV Asahi, 1992. Print.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jpon/hd_jpon.htm
https://www.kumon-ukiyoe.jp/en/history.php
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-japan#10
Quotes from van Gogh’s letter explaining color use
https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/audio-video/audio/collection-highlights-english/farmhouse-in-provence-van-gogh.html
The Life of Animals in Japanese Art
https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2019/life-of-animals-in-japanese-art.html
Library of Congress Japanese Prints Collection
https://www.loc.gov/collections/japanese-fine-prints-pre-1915/about-this-collection/
And?, Hiroshige, Artist. T?to meguro yuhhigaoka / Hiroshige ga. Fuji Japan Mount Tokyo, 1858. [Tokyo: Tsuta-ya Kichiz?] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004666335/.
Slow Art Day http://www.slowartday.com
TRANSCRIPT
Today I’m looking at Farmhouse in Provence by Vincent van Gogh. If you want to follow along, you can find it on the gallery’s website, www.nga.gov.
So what do you first notice?
A solitary man stands with his back to us knee deep in a green and gold field. He wears a cerulean blue jacket, mauve pants and a small black cap. His head is turned right to look at a tall stone wall running alongside the field. He’s about halfway down the left side of the canvas which is 18 inches high x 24 inches wide, about the size of a poster.
A short distance above him, the wall slopes down to meet a butter yellow farmhouse built in three sections, each with a sharply peaked yellow orange roof. It has three narrow teal windows. The house is surrounded by trees and bushes, some forest green, some navy blue. And to its left (our right) are 3 tall ochre mounds that I’m guessing are haystacks.
The house, field and wall are all part of a warm sunny landscape filling about two-thirds of the canvas. The wall runs left to right getting taller as it reaches just past the center where it meets a tall stone column. At the column, the wall suddenly curves sharply back towards us and ends in the foreground. In front of it are rose bushes with deep red blooms rising out of the field and running along its right side.
Now, this wall is an unusual combination of lilac and lavender with short stokes of blues, ochres and mauve in a kind of crosshatch pattern. Just opposite is a matching stone wall and column. This wall, with some green grass growing along it, emerges from the right side of the canvas along with a white road or path. The wall and road extend a short distance from right to left but the road curves back slightly to the right and ends abruptly at what looks like a blue?? Gate. Past the gate is another long streak of violet and mauve angling up and back to the right, with more areas of green and gold on either side. I’m guessing it’s a continuation of that wall.
The green and gold continue upwards until they hit a low line of blue hills spanning the width of the canvas. The top third of the painting is filled with a bright teal sky with circular swirling clouds.
After several minutes, I didn’t see anything else but I felt something. The powerful contrast of the cool lilac, lavender and blues next to the warm greens, gold and ochres creates an energy. It might have been the coffee I had at lunch, but those tightly packed vertical strokes in the fields, the sketchy cirrus clouds and those bright colors made me feel…restless, a little fidgety. After my 10 minutes of looking, I had to walk away, it got a little too intense!
MUSIC
Van Gogh is famous for his bold use of color, which he picked up in part from the Impressionists. As a matter of fact, Pissarro, who we looked at a while ago, is the one who taught him the trick of using strong color contrasts. The Impressionists liked this technique because it energized their paintings. Van Gogh even explains in one of his letters that instead of trying to reproduce what he sees, he uses color arbitrarily, to express himself forcefully.
Another big influence on him were Japanese woodblock prints. I’ll include one in the post. By 1888 when this was painted, Japan had been trading with the West for about 30 years after being a closed society for almost 200. It had been forced to open its harbor when American naval commander Admiral Perry showed up with warships and demanded they open up. Because of their isolation the Japanese were unaware of how powerful other nations’ military and technology had become. So when Perry showed up, they realized they were outgunned and finally opened up their ports for trade.
But they quickly adapted. They began to exhibit things like ceramics, kimonos, lacquerware, and fans at Worlds Fairs and international expositions all over Europe and people just went crazy for them. Plus, they started exporting goods to European dealers so their popularity spread even further. There was even a name for this craze, Japonisme. It was especially popular in Paris when van Gogh moved there to live with his brother Theo. Woodblock prints were starting to enter the market and he and Theo actually collected a lot of them! There’s actually a story that the artist Eduoard Manet discovered them being used as packing materials in a spice shop! Kind of how we pack boxes with newspapers when we ship stuff!
Artists like Vincent loved these works because of how different they were from everything they’d been taught. The prints had these oddly cropped views, bold colors, and strong black outlines instead of shadows. The scenes were kind of titled and flattened with no perspective like in Western art. They also loved how these scenes showed everyday life and especially nature.
Van Gogh was so smitten by these prints that he determined to experiment painting the same way. The other inspiration was a romanticized idea he had that Japan was a simpler, more beautiful place, where they managed to avoid the pollution and problems created by the Industrial Revolution. He believed that Arles in the South of France was the “Japan of the South,” and would provide the same bright colors and pre-industrial lifestyle he admired so much in the prints he collected. So he moved there and in a little over year ended up producing hundreds of paintings and drawings, some of which are among his best-loved works, including this one.
And by the way, if you want to see the kind of art that influenced van Gogh, the Gallery has a great exhibition on, The Life of Animals in Japanese Art. There are gorgeous prints, clothing, and statues and it’s definitely kid friendly! It runs through August 18 in the East Building. I’ll include a link in the show notes.
OUTRO:
So this is what slow art is all about. You don’t have to see everything when you visit a museum. Just find a few pieces that catch your eye and let yourself really look closely. Let the art kind of reveal itself. The Slow Art website recommends 5 to 10 minutes. I hope you’ll try this out on your next museum visit and you can find more info at www.slowartday.com
Want to know where I get my information? The Gallery’s website is my main source but I use others as well. You can find links in the show notes on the show’s website, alonglook-slowart.com and in most podcast apps. While you’re there, why not subscribe and share? It’s free and that way you and your friends won’t miss an episode! You can find subscription links and social buttons near the end of each post. And don’t forget to look for me on Instagram @alonglookslowart!
Thanks for joining me!
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