1889, Vincent van Gogh, Cypresses -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Van Gogh gave palpable form to the hulking majesty and strapping vitality of the cypresses viewed against the Alpilles at twilight. Working quickly and with gusto, he confronted them head-on, intent on teasing out the "difficult shade of bottle green" with a broad range of hues in thick, sweeping passages of impasto. He folded the spirit of the Provençal artist Adolphe Monticelli - who "gives us something passionate and eternal" - into his fashioning of the trees, while tweaking the shape of the crescent moon at least three times until it fell into place. The work leaves no doubt as to his intense study of the motif in plein air: from the scores of pebbles and vegetal matter embedded in the paint surface to the multicolored dabs of pigment added later to represent the small cones studding the cypresses.
Link to a high-resolution close-up photo of details from this painting.
Link to other paintings from “Van Gogh’s Cypresses.”
Link to other van Gogh paintings.
1889, Vincent van Gogh, Cypresses -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Van Gogh gave palpable form to the hulking majesty and strapping vitality of the cypresses viewed against the Alpilles at twilight. Working quickly and with gusto, he confronted them head-on, intent on teasing out the "difficult shade of bottle green" with a broad range of hues in thick, sweeping passages of impasto. He folded the spirit of the Provençal artist Adolphe Monticelli - who "gives us something passionate and eternal" - into his fashioning of the trees, while tweaking the shape of the crescent moon at least three times until it fell into place. The work leaves no doubt as to his intense study of the motif in plein air: from the scores of pebbles and vegetal matter embedded in the paint surface to the multicolored dabs of pigment added later to represent the small cones studding the cypresses.
Link to a high-resolution close-up photo of details from this painting.
Link to other paintings from “Van Gogh’s Cypresses.”
Link to other van Gogh paintings.