we see the Day of the God (1894). Astonishingly, this masterpiece of the
South Seas was painted in Paris! A wooden idol is at the back center, and
women approach it. Women are bathing and sleeping in the foreground. In
the distance, we see the seashore and the surf. Exquisitely beautiful in color
and pattern, the painting suggests a mythic Arcadia, one that has echoes in
earlier art and that anticipates and surely inÀ uenced the Arcadian paintings
of Henri Matisse 10 years later.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) was born in the Netherlands, the son of a
pastor. As a young man, he was quite uncertain of his direction. He jumped
from job to job as a young man before ¿ nally turning to art, with the support
of his brother, Theo, when he was 27 years old. Through his brother, Van
Gogh discovered that he could use drawing as a means of recovering his
mental balance. He spent some months working in a painter’s studio in
Brussels and may have attended classes at the Academy.
In 1881, Van Gogh moved to Etten to live with his parents. There he taught
himself perspective, anatomy, and physiognomy. Only six years later, he was
accomplished enough to paint his Self-Portrait as an Artist (1887–1888).
This was not the artist’s ¿ rst self-portrait, but it is the ¿ rst in which he shows
himself as a self-con¿ dent painter, palette in hand, and with all the colors of
the painting carefully included on the palette.
Next, we turn to The Harvest (1888), which ¿ rst was worked out carefully in
a pen and watercolor drawing. In letters to his brother, Van Gogh described
the colors of the painting in great detail.
Our next example is The Red Vineyard (1888). Again, the artist described the
scene in a letter to Theo. Van Gogh looked at nature as intensely as Cézanne
did but ¿ ltered it through a different psyche, a personality so tenuously
balanced on the brink that the painting seems to have been created in a
rush of emotion. Yet Van Gogh also controls the painting as carefully as he
describes the scene, so that the wine-warm colors; the À uid, improvisatory
brushwork; the expansive sweep of space; and the animation of the small
¿ gures in the vineyard all coalesce.