Garden at Arles by Vincent Van Gogh

Garden at Arles by Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas 1888, is a landscape painting of a small footpath through a sprawling garden of flower beds under a sunny sky, with fruit trees, shrubbery, cypresses and rural French buildings in the background. With varied brushstrokes that convey the form, growth and movement of the landscape forms, applied direct to bare canvas in dabs of pure colour, Van Gogh constructs a lively composition that captures the inner life of his flowery motif. Here the artist has moved beyond the lessons of Impressionism that he absorbed in Paris and into the hallmarks of his mature style that he developed in the south of France. Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) was a Dutch painter of the Post-Impressionist movement known for bold, expressive drawing, swirling brushstrokes and intense, heightened colours. In early adulthood Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, teacher and pastor before taking up the full time study of drawing and painting in his late twenties. Influenced by Rembrandt, the 19th century Realists and Barbizon school, Van Gogh’s early paintings featured studies of workers and peasants in sombre earth tones. Moving to France in 1886, Van Gogh met with the startling innovations of the Impressionist painters and began to apply their approach to colour and subject matter, which continued into the mature style for which the artist is most renowned. Van Gogh produced many hundreds of drawings and paintings including portraits, landscapes, still life and flower paintings, and numerous self-portraits that became a dominating influence on the modern art of the 20th century and made him one of the most popular artists of all time.