''Landscape with Wheelbarrow'' is a

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting metho ...

on cream wove paper painting by the Dutch

Post-Impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

painter

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...

. In 1883, Van Gogh painted a vast piece of land in emerald and chartreuse-like colors accompanied by a lonesome wheelbarrow in the middle ground along with red roofed cottages on the horizon line. The painting is accented with

graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

. It is in permanent collection at the

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Located in the Wade Park District of University Circle, the museum is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian art, Asian and Art of anc ...

Drenthe, Netherlands

Van Gogh started this watercolor painting merely one year after beginning professional work as an artist. After a secret relationship with a woman known as Sien, whom his family did not approve of, Van Gogh left

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

at the advice of his friends in September 1883. Van Gogh wanted to visit an area of open countryside and endless fields of green and reached a city named

Drenthe Drenthe () is a province of the Netherlands located in the northeastern part of the country. It is bordered by Overijssel to the south, Friesland to the west, Groningen to the north, and the German state of Lower Saxony to the east. As of Jan ...

, in north-east Netherlands to take inspiration from the wild landscape. This city was primarily known to be untouched by the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

. Van Gogh described the terrain as peaceful and beautiful: "What tranquility, what expanse, what calmness in this nature."

Interpretations

In a letter to his brother Theo, in November 1883, Van Gogh wrote: We can gather from his letter to his brother that the views from his whereabouts in Drenthe inspired Van Gogh to use select colors to complete the painting. It is poignant in its green hues with touches of yellow and strokes of grey and white that he stayed true to his descriptions while painting. Because his letters during the autumn season were in a positive tone we can interpret this painting as a real life version of what he was seeing and not a complete cast of sorrow that is assumed during his sojourn. Van Gogh mentions in his letter that the sky is unbroken and not white, but includes a lilac and swirls of blue, red, and yellow that can be seen in the top left of the painting and above the horizon line.

Provenance

The dates of transfers and sales of the painting are unknown. However, the succession of ownership is as follows: *Frans Kantorowicz, Berlin *Galerie d'Art Lutz, Berlin *Erich Schall, Berlin *Galerie d'Art Artz et de Bois, La Haye * Justin Thannhauser, New York * Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Cleveland, OH *Bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1958

Painting materials

This painting is uses both watercolor and opaque watercolor. The finished product has touches of graphite or a dark chalk as showcased in the outlines of the wheelbarrow. The colors in the painting have not been investigated but the interpretation of colors used include: emerald, chartreuse, lavender (horizon), copper (cottage roofs), as well as white and black. Watercolor was not Van Gogh's initial medium, he was greatly known for his oil on canvas. In a letter to Theo, Van Gogh's brother, he wrote:

References

External links