NARRATOR:
The earthy palette of this winter scene is very different from the bright colors usually associated with van Gogh, but it’s typical of his early work. Until he moved to France in 1886, van Gogh lived and worked in northern Europe, mostly in his native Netherlands. This is the garden of his parents’ home in the town of Nuenen. Van Gogh was living with them at the time, after several unsuccessful attempts to support himself as an artist. By January 1885, when he painted this view, he was dejected. He wrote to his brother Theo:
VAN GOGH (actor):
“It is sad outside, the fields look like marble with clods of black earth and some snow, mostly interspersed with a few days of fog and mud, the red sun in the evening and the morning, crows, withered grass and wilted rotting green-black bushes and branches of poplars and willows showing angrily like strands of wire against the sad sky.”
NARRATOR:
With color and brush stroke, van Gogh captured the damp, cold atmosphere perfectly. The snow in the foreground here is tinged with icy blue, and the sky is leaden. The only real brightness comes from the long horizontal line of snow along the garden wall. The stillness is punctuated by the lonely figure, and the nervous tangle of leafless branches.
Winter (The Vicarage Garden under Snow)
Probably January 1885, Nuenen
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
On View
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.
Details
- Artist Name: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
- Title: Winter (The Vicarage Garden under Snow)
- Date: Probably January 1885, Nuenen
- Medium: Oil on canvas, mounted to panel
- Dimensions: 23 x 31-1/8 in. (58.4 x 79.1 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1969.39.2.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
C. Mouwen, Jr., Breda (sale, Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Cie, Amsterdam, 3 May 1904, lot 6, as L’hiver, unsold).
[Oldenzeel Art Gallery, Rotterdam].
Henricus Petrus Bremmer (1871-1956), The Hague, 1905, by descent to;
his heirs.
?[E.V. Thaw & Co., New York; stock no. R8106];
?[Reid & Lefevre, London];
[E. J. van Wisselingh and Co., Amsterdam; stock no. S 2589, as L’Hiver; by 1963; offered 24 September 1969 and subsequently sold 22 October 1969 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[Oldenzeel Art Gallery, Rotterdam].
Henricus Petrus Bremmer (1871-1956), The Hague, 1905, by descent to;
his heirs.
?[E.V. Thaw & Co., New York; stock no. R8106];
?[Reid & Lefevre, London];
[E. J. van Wisselingh and Co., Amsterdam; stock no. S 2589, as L’Hiver; by 1963; offered 24 September 1969 and subsequently sold 22 October 1969 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Vincent van Gogh
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