Art Appreciation: Vincent van Gogh and Nature

In a letter sent from London in 1874 Vincent van Gogh wrote: “Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.”

As the National Gallery stages an exhibition of van Gogh’s paintings in the Autumn, it is a good occasion to deepen our understanding of the Dutch master’s art. In this session, we will look at the central role and place given to the natural world in his paintings.

We will take a chronological approach and first see how nature as a subject was treated in his early Dutch paintings, with a dark and muted palette. As he arrived in Paris and became acquainted with Impressionist painting, his own works became more colourful. In Paris he sought out nature: in cut flowers, urban parks, and Montmartre’s allotments. We will then follow his to Arles, where, at first, he wanted to see the blossoming orchards. There again, whether it was cypresses, great clouds and stars in the sky, or the irises in the hospital’s courtyard, he spent a lot of time observing and painting nature. We will conclude with some poignant paintings of fields dominated with stormy skies, painted just before his death.