Vincent van Gogh - Memory of the Garden at Etten [1888]

Vincent van Gogh - Memory of the Garden at Etten [1888], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting was produced at Arles, in Provence, to which van Gogh moved in February 1888, embarking upon 15 months of frenetic painting - he produced over 200 canvases, despite or perhaps because of his depression and nervous crises. This painting recalls his native Holland and the garden of his parents' house at Etten. The artist's impressions of the bright sun and resonant colours of the south were combined with nostalgia for home. Working in Arles alongside Gauguin, he came under the strong influence of the latter's style, which can be seen in the flattened space and the broad areas of colour outlined with thick contours. But van Gogh's powerful romantic temperament demanded expression in a more dramatic style that was to be found in Gauguin's work, and he used intense colouring and rough surface texture to create an individual artistic language which expressed both the energy and drama of life.

[Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - Sunflowers [1888]

Vincent van Gogh - Sunflowers [1888], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is one of four paintings of sunflowers dating from August and September 1888. Van Gogh intended to decorate Gauguin's room with these paintings in the so-called Yellow House that he rented in Arles in the South of France. He and Gauguin worked there together between October and December 1888.

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in August 1888, 'I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that what I'm at is the painting of some sunflowers. If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow. I am working at it every morning from sunrise on, for the flowers fade so quickly. I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers ... it gives a singular effect.'

The dying flowers are built up with thick brushstrokes (impasto). The impasto evokes the texture of the seed-heads. Van Gogh produced a replica of this painting in January 1889, and perhaps another one later in the year. The various versions and replicas remain much debated among Van Gogh scholars.

[Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm]