Van Gogh Gallery (Guide)

Vincent van Gogh painted for only about ten of his thirty-seven years, yet each place he lived seems to have been painted by a different hand. In the Netherlands he depicted peasants and weavers in heavy, earthy tones. In Paris, contact with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism brightened his palette at once. In Arles in the south, color exploded under the sun—cypresses, sunflowers, and night cafés in strong yellow-and-blue contrast. At the asylum in Saint-Rémy, cypresses and starry skies rise in swirling strokes; at Auvers-sur-Oise he closed his short life with wheat fields and flying crows.

Each canvas records what Van Gogh saw and felt in that place at that moment—the pleasure of his art is to follow those stylistic shifts themselves.

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access / Wikimedia Commons