Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night--Some Early Paintings

The exhibition offers a rare look at some of Van Gogh’s earlier paintings; and the juxtaposition of these early paintings with the paintings of Van Gogh’s mature style, for which he is so famous, also offers a rare look at the artist’s progress. In the first room of the exhibition, in the northeast corner of that room, three paintings, one from 1883, when he was living in the Hague, one from 1887, after he had moved to France, and one from 1890, one of the chronologically latest paintings in the exhibition, surprised me with the contrast between them but also with the continuity. In each painting the subject is not much different – a twilight scene – but each painting also marks a moment in the artist’s progress. The first, Twilight, Old Farm Houses in Loosduinen, is drab and conveys Van Gogh’s concern with painting realistically. The second, Sunset at Montmartre, is still concerned with realism, but evinces a striking shift in Van Gogh’s relationship with color and brushstroke. The declining sun reminds us of the Van Gogh we know, as it looks forward to his warm use of color – light oranges and yellows set against the blue-green sky – and his standout, powerful strokes with the brush. The third painting, however, Landscape at Twilight, finished not long before his death, calls the artist to mind without hesitation, as Van Gogh lacquers on thick brushstrokes in contrasting bright, deep, warm, dark, ocher hues.

Many of the other early paintings are certainly worthy of note, but I can only manage here to say that one of them in particular, Toward Evening, which Van Gogh painted in 1885, begins to show us, as a friend of mine said, his ability to cast a meditative quality. He does this by laying down a scene: the vastness of nature, with the human playing its tender part in the field.