Vincent van Gogh
Rain, 1889
oil on canvas
28 7/8 x 36 3/8 inches
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
I have been thinking about van Gogh lately.
In particular, I have been thinking about his painting Rain. I am not sure why it popped into my head, but it could very well have been the extreme storms that seem to be a regular occurrence here in Pennsylvania this summer. The kind of extreme rain where the size and multitude of raindrops physically diminish one’s field of vision.
While I have always enjoyed van Gogh, of late I am gaining a new understanding of his work. This is actually an important part of Pondering and why I decided to launch this supplement to Damned Hard Work. Throughout life our perspectives change. Life has a way of making you see things clearly that you never saw before, and with it a new understanding.
With van Gogh, I now see how he was entirely driven to make the work he believed in and was revolutionizing not only how a painting was made but how one saw painting, just through the act of painting. He looked at the painters around him as well as who came before him. The new theories of color and painting being experimented with were all around him. He saw positive aspects in most, but also ones that didn’t apply to his vision. His doubt toward Impressionism manifests in a something newthat exemplifies the perceptive nature of painting. It is not to reproduce nature but to reproduce an experience with nature. It is individual, yet universal. It is not that I didn’t see this before in his work, but something about the way I see my own world through paint has made van Gogh’s version all the more clear.
It was incredible how many paintings van Gogh completed in the last two years of his life. Not just by number, but by excellence. It was a truly stunning feat of painting. Rain is one of a handful of paintings van Gogh produced late in his life of storms and rain. Symbolic, maybe, or just a visual coincidence of the place he was painting? There is that subconscious draw to elements of the landscape and weather that tends to metaphorically mirror ones situation in life. What is clear, just from the number of paintings from this time period, he didn’t think, he just painted. Rain was a complete reaction to what he was witnessing from his window at the asylum in Arles. Again, not a realist depiction of nature, but in a sense it feels more real because we are witness to his experience with this rain. It has all of the feeling of a rainy day. You imagine rainy days as gray and drab, but in reality they are often full of color. You see that here in Rain. A brightening sky, a narrow value range, but full of color. We are transported to that moment, his moment becomes ours.
Rain, its visual simplicity and the angled lines of color resembling raindrops, have always stopped me in my tracks. Of all the other works in the room, this little painting of rain draws me in every time, connects me with van Gogh, to a place I have never been, across an ocean,136 years later.
That is the power of painting.
I will continue to ponder van Gogh. Thanks for pondering with me.
Truly, it's lightly raining here and there's a double rainbow outside my window. I felt this line: "There is that subconscious draw to elements of the landscape and weather that tends to metaphorically mirror ones situation in life." Lately I crave fog, mist, rain--the grey--when before I chased the sun. Thanks for the ponder and inviting me/us to ponder with you.
PS. Your post has reminded me of a film in my watchlist that I've been curious about: Loving Vincent (2017).