![]() |
Courtesy of www.VincentVanGogh.org |
This painting was done at great speed, and has the appearance of being unfinished or being a sketch for a later work. There is another painting that incorporates a pollarded willow in the foreground set against a vibrant sky
with a figure of a sower, and it is possible that this picture was intended as a study for the later one. However, he used the image of pollarded willows in several paintings, and it seems to have been a form that he was
attracted to. There is something stark and rather sinister about the truncated trees, particularly in this picture, as their spiky branches appear to form a grill across the picture surface and in front of the great, glowing
sun.
Van Gogh has again treated the sun with some reverence, lending it a symbolic and almost iconic importance. Throughout the whole picture there is enormous north-south movement with his brushstrokes being strongly vertical
virtually in their entirety, with the exception of the radiating strokes from the sun. There is a sense that he attacked the canvas with his paint in this picture. It has a surreal quality manifested in the strident, fierce
strokes and intense colours.
MOST POPULAR PAINTINGS
Vincent van Gogh's Letters
The Starry Night
Café Terrace at Night
Sunflowers
Self Portrait
Irise
Starry Night over the Rhone
Almond Blossom
Wheatfield with Crows
Tree Roots