Vincent van Gogh
Until June 12, 2022, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam you can visit the Van Gogh and the Olive Groves exhibition, which displays together for the first time the paintings that Vincent van Gogh made of olive groves. Today we offer a masterpiece from this exhibition, from the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Enjoy! :)
Olive trees are typical of the southern French landscape. There were lots of olive groves around the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, to which Vincent van Gogh had himself admitted in May 1889. Fascinated by the trees’ irregular shapes and ever-changing colors, he painted them repeatedly, in different seasons, and at different times of day. Van Gogh completed 15 paintings of olive groves between June and December 1889. It was a special series of works, in which he experimented freely with expressive colors, lines, and forms. His aim was to depict the essence of the subject.
Van Gogh started to paint the olive groves the moment he was allowed outside the asylum. Once he had mastered the trees’ typical features, he began to experiment with his style in a quest to express a deeper significance. In his first large painting of an olive grove, made in June 1889, Van Gogh used loose, quick brushstrokes to capture the effect of the sun on the leaves, which constantly change color in the light. He described this painting in a letter as "an olive grove with grey foliage more or less like that of the willows, their cast shadows violet on the sun-drenched sand."
P.S. Discover the special connection Van Gogh had with nature in his art. :)
P.P.S. Vincent van Gogh is one of our favorite artists, which is why in our DailyArt Shop you can check all the artsy notebooks, prints, and socks with van Gogh's masterpieces!