Van Gogh - using colour in landscape

Vincent Van Gogh - Wheatfield, Arles, June 1888

There’s an Instagram account ‘Daily Van Gogh’ which I look at most days. As the name implies, you get a daily dose of Van Gogh in the form of a picture. This one, Wheatfield in Arles, cropped up in the middle of March and I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since. I’m not quite sure why I find this image so gripping, so I thought I’d write about it and see if I can nail its allure.

As so often with Van Gogh, the use of colour is pre-eminent. But that’s not all. I think there’s something about this composition which is really satisfying to look at. There’s a strong diagonal running from part-way up the left hand side down to the bottom right hand corner and this element of the composition is really important. Further up, on the right hand side there’s a Z shape outlining the fields, and that too is very striking. So, although the picture plane is split between the sky and the fields below the horizon line, there is more to the composition than a simple horizontal division.

There’s detail along the horizon line, notably the buildings on the left hand side, and a fair bit of vegetation, including a strange vertical wiggly shape just to the right of centre. Maybe a column of smoke? This all helps to establish a strong and varied horizon line.

And then, what of the colour? There are the basic complementaries of blue and orange. The blues shade into purples and the orange into yellows. And there are small amounts of red and green, also complementaries. There are hardly any muddy tones at all and the colours are unmuted and joyous. And the way the colour is applied is important too. There are heavy directional strokes in the wheatfield in a range of oranges, yellows and greens. This produces a vitality in the painting, a sense of movement.

Your choice of colour depends on what you are painting, of course. Wheatfields in Arles are considerably further south than Van Gogh’s native Holland or, indeed, Northumberland. Sometimes, you can’t get away from the sludgy greys and browns of the natural landscape. It’s not all sunflowers and ripe wheat. Even Van Gogh felt the need to paint rain. Here’s another one from Daily Van Gogh that appeared a couple of days ago:

That’s a brilliant painting of rain. There are plenty of sludgy colours, but if you look closely, also some bright greens, blues and purples. He actually uses lots of colours to achieve the effect.

I find that increasingly, I’m looking at great artists’ paintings for clues on how to proceed. The wheatfield in Arles painting is full of bright colour. I learn from this that if you’re looking at bright colour in the landscape, don’t dull it down with sludge. Just go for it and don’t be afraid of the colour. And if you’re looking at something dull and grey, as in the painting of rain, there may actually be a lot of bright colour in amongst the greys.