Van Gogh’s earliest paintings were earth-toned scenes of nature and peasants, but he became increasingly influenced by Japanese prints and the work of the impressionists in France. In 1886 he arrived in Paris, where his real formation as a painter began. Under the influence of Camille Pissarro, Van Gogh brightened his somber palette and juxtaposed complementary colors for luminous effect. Younger artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin prompted him to use color symbolically and for its emotional resonance.
Vintage 1957 Van Gogh Portrait "Peasant Girl" Offset Lithograph
GOLDEN RULE GALLERY VINTAGE ART
A beautiful vintage offset lithograph of the oil painting "Peasant Girl" (1890) by Vincent Van Gogh. Printed on one side only and hand tipped-in on a sheet of heavy paper.
Information regarding the original painting can be found by lifting the plate.
Image: 7 7/8" x 9 5/8" on heavy paper.
In early June 1890 Van Gogh was in good spirits describing himself as feeling, 'completely calm and in normal condition', when writing to Madame Ginoux in Arles, but just a few weeks later he was devastated by the news that his young nephew and his sister-in-law were both seriously ill. He painted this picture, and another of the same subject at around this time.
Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat, 1890 has an echo of his early peasant works done at the beginning of his career, and shows the girl in close focus and sympathetically rendered. There is much of the Symbolist here, and even more so in the other painting that hangs at the National Gallery of Art. The poppies have been reduced to glowing red orbs, picking up on the girl's ruddy cheeks and the dotted pattern of her rich, blue dress, against which her vibrant yellow hat glows. He has applied the paint so thickly that the surface is highly textured and her face almost three-dimensional, while his use of heavy outline sets her apart from the background of wheat.
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Vincent van Gogh grew up in the southern Netherlands, where his father was a minister. After seven years at a commercial art firm, Van Gogh’s desire to help humanity led him to become a teacher, preacher, and missionary—yet without success. Working as a missionary among coal miners in Belgium, he had begun to draw in earnest; finally, dismissed by church authorities in 1880, he found his vocation in art.
Although stimulated by the city’s artistic environment, Van Gogh found life in Paris physically exhausting and moved in early 1888 to Arles. He hoped Provence’s warm climate would relax him and that the brilliant colors and strong light of the south would provide inspiration for his art. Working feverishly, Van Gogh pushed his style to greater expression with intense, energetic brushwork and saturated, complementary colors. Yet his densely painted canvases remained connected to nature—their colors and rhythmic surfaces communicate the spiritual power he believed inhabited and shaped nature's forms. His activity was not undisciplined; quite the opposite, he worked diligently to perfect his craft.
