Vincent van Gogh
Well, it is Boxing Day or Second Christmas Day. (Have you checked our online shop with paper calendars for 2020?) Today we have for you this van Gogh winter scene. It's a bit gloomy but a little bit of melancholy won't hurt anyone!
In a letter to his brother Theo from 1879, Van Gogh wrote: “It is sometimes so bitterly cold in the winter that one says, `The cold is too awful for me to care whether summer is coming or not; the harm outdoes the good.’ But with or without our approval, the severe weather does come to an end eventually and one fine morning the wind changes and there is the thaw. When I compare the state of the weather to our state of mind and our circumstances, subject to change and fluctuation like the weather, then I still have some hope that things may get better.”
In this view across the vicarage garden, a lone figure clears a path, though the leafless bushes—or perhaps markers—at left give us pause: is this man shoveling snow, or digging a grave?
P.S. See you tomorrow! We promise you something more cheerful; for now check out these Boxing Day paintings here!