1885, Vincent van Gogh, Winter (The Vicarage Garden under Snow) -- Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena)
From the museum label: Van Gogh's father was a Protestant minister; the artist himself had studied theology and pursued missionary work briefly before settling with his parents in the vicarage of a remote Dutch town in 1883. 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? From bare trees to dirty snow, to wintry, scumbled sky, the landscape is willfully, unremittingly bleak, a painted equivalent to Émile Zola's grim Naturalist novels of the same period.
Link to other van Gogh paintings
1885, Vincent van Gogh, Winter (The Vicarage Garden under Snow) -- Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena)
From the museum label: Van Gogh's father was a Protestant minister; the artist himself had studied theology and pursued missionary work briefly before settling with his parents in the vicarage of a remote Dutch town in 1883. 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? From bare trees to dirty snow, to wintry, scumbled sky, the landscape is willfully, unremittingly bleak, a painted equivalent to Émile Zola's grim Naturalist novels of the same period.
Link to other van Gogh paintings