What Is The Mood Of 'The Rocks' By Van Gogh: Romantic Or Romantic?

539 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Van Gogh’s use of complementary color schemes in The Sower and The Night Café

A twisted oak tree dominates this rocky, windswept landscape. This site is in the south of France, three miles northeast of Arles near the ruined medieval Abbey of Montmajour. Although van Gogh made many drawings of the abbey, The Rocks is his only painting of the countryside near Montmajour. He was so moved by these surroundings that he wrote an evocative letter, dated July 5, 1888, to his brother Theo:

Yesterday at sunset I was on a stony heath where some very small twisted oaks grow; in the background, a ruin on a hill, and wheat in the valley. It was romantic…the sun pouring bright yellow rays on the bushes and the ground, a perfect shower of gold. And all the lines were lovely, the whole thing nobly beautiful. You would not have been surprised to see knights and ladies suddenly appear, coming back from hunting or hawking, or to have heard the voice of some old Provençal troubadour. The fields looked violet, the distances blue.¹ …show more content…

Van Gogh directs attention to the tree by its large size, its central placement, and the contrast of its dark leaves against the pale sky. Typical of van Gogh’s style are the prominent brushstrokes of thick paint, which create a rich texture and sense of vitality, focusing attention on the flat surface of the painting. Layers of oil paint are built up on the canvas, giving a sculptural quality to the rocks and trees.

In van Gogh’s art, color is an important expressive element. Here the palette relies on cool blues and greens and warm yellows and oranges to capture the sunny landscape. The harmony of colors is appropriate for the “romantic” mood and “nobly beautiful” effect the landscape evoked for van Gogh. The whites, creams, pale blues, and soft pink and peach tones describe the light-filled

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Alexis Rockman's Kapok Tree

    814 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through her masterful usage of color and lighting, painter Alexis Rockman seeks to display the overwhelming beauty of the natural world and its inhabitants in her painting Kapok Tree. With a color scheme of bright colors that pops out and grab the attention of the viewer and an emphasis on lighting that divides the painting into two separate scenes, Rockman’s Kapok Tree delivers its timeless message with ease.

    Read More

  • The Glory of the Light Within by Dale Terbush

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the left-bottom corner of the painting, the viewer is presented with a rugged-orangish cliff and on top of it, two parallel dark green trees extending towards the sky. This section of the painting is mostly shadowed in darkness since the cliff is high, and the light is emanating from the background. A waterfall, seen originating from the far distant mountains, makes its way down into a patch of lime-green pasture, then fuses into a white lake, and finally becomes anew, a chaotic waterfall(rocks interfere its smooth passage), separating the latter cliff with a more distant cliff in the center. At the immediate bottom-center of the foreground appears a flat land which runs from the center and slowly ascends into a cliff as it travels to the right. Green bushes, rough orange rocks, and pine trees are scattered throughout this piece of land. Since this section of the painting is at a lower level as opposed to the left cliff, the light is more evidently being exposed around the edges of the land, rocks, and trees. Although the atmosphere of the landscape is a chilly one, highlights of a warm light make this scene seem to take place around the time of spring.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Frederic Edwin Church's Twilight In The Wilderness

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    An artwork will consist of different elements that artists bring together to create different forms of art from paintings, sculptures, movies and more. These elements make up what a viewer sees and to help them understand. In the painting Twilight in the Wilderness created by Frederic Edwin Church in 1860 on page 106, a landscape depicting a sun setting behind rows of mountains is seen. In this painting, Church used specific elements to draw the viewer’s attention directly to the middle of the painting that consisted of the sun. Church primarily uses contrast to attract attention, but it is the different aspects of contrast that he uses that makes the painting come together. In Twilight in the Wilderness, Church uses color, rhythm, and focal

    Read More

  • Analysis of Artwork The Beeches by Asher B. Durand

    273 Words  | 1 Pages

    This work shows impeccably drawn beech and basswood trees. It was painted for a New York collector by the name of Abraham M. Cozzens who was then a member of the executive committee of the American Art-Union. The painting shows a new trend in the work of the Hudson River School. It depicts a scene showing a tranquil mood. Durand was influenced by the work of the English landscape painter John Constable, whose vertical formats and truth to nature he absorbed while visiting England in 1840.

    Read More

  • Art Formal Analysis

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    The texture of the canvas works very well with the subject matter portrayed in the painting. The grassy hill side and the leaves of the trees are especially complimented by the canvas. It makes the leaves feel like they are slightly moving, this combined with the lack of detail itself the leaves. This is contrasted nicely with the very detailed renderings of the trunks and branches of the trees, the conscious decision to put so much effort into the tree itself and then to use obvious brushwork in the leaves makes the trees much more firm and immovable in the landscape. The brushstrokes are very clean and precise on the trees in the background.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Kapok Tree

    811 Words  | 2 Pages

    Alexis Rockman traveled the world, and used his travels as inspiration for his paintings. He painted the Kapok Tree after visiting Guyana, a country in South America. This painting beautifully depicts a tree in the rainforest. He addresses the fact that there are so many problems in society that are being overlooked. People do not realize their importance in changing things for good. Not only do we have the ability to cause change, it is our responsibility because we are the root of all the problems. Alexis Rockman frames the Kapok Tree in such a way that the audience notices the vibrantly colored lifeforms at the bottom and then he draws a line, with the tree, up to the dark sky showing how there is so much more to this world than we first realize.

    Read More

  • Grant Wood’s "American Gothic"

    1418 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is, however, a slight opposition to this intense realism. It can be seen in Wood’s representation of foliage. The trees that appear in the upper left corner look like large green lollipops peeking over the roof of the house. The viewer knows that trees do not naturally look like that. Wood has depicted them as stylized and modern, similar to the trees seen is Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grand Jatte. After viewing other works by Wood, it is clear that he has adopted this representation for the trees in many of his paintings.

    Read More

  • The Sower By Vincent Van Gogh Analysis

    1070 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, Van Gogh used the elements above to create a man by himself in a field. He used color to represent feeling rather than represent realism of an event. The cool colors represent the field and happiness in his work. The warm colors represent the harshness of the day and could be a metaphor for life. He used scale and proportion to emphasis the overbearing sun. He also used proportion and scale to represent literally and figuratively how far away home was. The linear perspective was only evident to me after I really studied the used of lines. I followed the lines to the horizon and left side of the painting.

    Read More

  • Rain At Auvers by Vincent Van Gogh

    479 Words  | 1 Pages

    The colours used in the artwork are earthy tones with various browns, greens, yellows, blues and some violet. These colours create a sense of harmony on the...

    Read More

  • Van Gogh's Potato Eaters and Starry Night

    515 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jean Francois Millet, who was a social realist painter who inspired Van Gogh, and he studied at the Barbizon School. He painted rural life to show the poverty stricken people, capturing the lives of peasants at work. Making a statement on what is taking place in the world. Communicating through art to expose the poor conditions and physical hardships that hard working people are enduring. It is an invitation, to look into the working class environment, which is gritty, real and true. This stirred up controversy, because of its honest approach.

    Read More

  • The Bedroom By Vincent Van Gogh

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    This painting by Vincent Van Gogh is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum, in the Impressionism exhibit. There are many things going on in this painting that catch the viewer’s eye. The first is the piece’s vibrant colors, light blues and browns, bright greens, and more. The brush strokes that are very visible and can easily be identified as very thick some might even say bold. The furniture, the objects, and the setting are easy to identify and are proportioned to each other. There is so much to see in this piece to attempt to explain in only a few simple sentences.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Vincent Van Gogh's Wheat Field With Crows

    1279 Words  | 3 Pages

    Similar to many of the van Gogh’s paintings completed close to the end of his life, Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows is a representational painting depicting nature around him. This piece is showing the wheat fields surrounding the graveyard of the Church in Auvers-sur-Oise - the graveyard where both van Gogh and his brother, Theo, were buried. The artist shows his interpretation of the wheat field on a stormy day, with three paths converging in the center of the painting's foreground. The center path disappears into the distance with an “abrupt termination” on its way to the horizon, creating a true sense of depth, while the other two ...

    Read More

  • Art Analysis: Olive Trees By Vincent Van Gogh

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    Starting with visual elements I saw lines, implied depth, and texture. I see lines by him using lines created by an edge. Each line is curved not straight but it works with the piece. By using this he creates the piece to make it whole. He uses many curved lines within the painting I don’t know if there is a straight line in the whole thing. The next element I saw was implied depth. Using linear perspective you can see the mountains but they look smaller than the rest of the piece. They are the vanishing point in the back making it look as if you can walk down and they will get closer and closer to you. The last element that I saw was texture. They talk about Van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night having texture through a two- dimensional surface, in which this painting has that similar feel. Van Gogh uses thick brush stokes on his paintings to show his feelings. There is actually a name for this called, Impasto,

    Read More

  • Analysis of Olive Trees by Vincent Van Gogh

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    Like many of Van Gogh’s paintings, Olive Trees commences as a landscape and expands into a complex work, disclosing influences from other times and places. Using the color theory and separated brushstrokes of the Impressionists, the movement and vivid colors of the Romantics, and lighting and composition inspired by Millet, Van Gogh achieves the potency and significance that characterizes his work. Van Gogh’s paintings can’t possibly be mistaken for those of another artist of his time because, despite the fact that all of his means have criterion, his end results do not.

    Read More

  • Henri Rousseau's Woman With An Umbrella In An Exotic Forest

    424 Words  | 1 Pages

    Once the sketch of complicated growth and initial watercolor was was completed, I then transitioned to markers, darkening areas in need of more shadow such as the trees and plants in the background, which paid more homage to Rousseau’s style. After, the use of watercolor pencils were added. Their soft texture aided in achieving the image of a more oily, thicker medium, such as that of the oil paint employed by the original artist. Lastly, as a finishing touch, the woman and the areas where plants crossed over one another were outlined faintly with a fine-point

    Read More

More about What Is The Mood Of 'The Rocks' By Van Gogh: Romantic Or Romantic?

Open Document