The analysis of two art works T. Rousseau’s “Edge of the Woods” (1853) and Van Gogh’s “Olive Trees” (1889)
This work is devoted to the analysis of two art works T. Rousseau’s “Edge of the Woods” (1853) and Van Gogh’s “Olive Trees” (1889).
Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in the family of a priest in the village of Zundert Grotto in Holland. Since childhood he independently studied paintings, and then he worked as a dealer at a major trading company which specialized in selling paintings. When he decided to devote himself to paintings, Van Gogh attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels (1880), and then in Antwerp (1885-1886), he took lessons at a private school picture. His first paintings were “The Return of the workers” (1880); “Miners” (1880) and others — they are imbued with the artist’s attention to the work and life of ordinary people. These works testify his painfully acute perception of human sufferings.
In 1886-1888 years. Vincent Van Gogh continued his studies in Paris in the studio F.Kormona. He became close to Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin P. and P. Signac. The artist’s works “Alley of poplars in Nuenen” (1885), “The Potato Eaters” (1885), “Field of blooming poppy” (1888), “Sunflowers” (1888), etc.) differ juicy, bright colors, free and dynamic smear. There are many self-portraits among Van Gogh paintings of this period.
In 1888 Vah Gogh moved to Arles in southern France. Vah Gogh’s paintings of this period (“Night Cafe”, 1888 “The Red Vineyard”, 1888, etc.) are perfect specimens of post-impressionism. These paintings, filled with tremendous emotional power and expression, are embodied and impulse to harmony and happiness, and the horror of the hostile forces of evil and loneliness.
The last years of his life the artist suffered bouts of mental illness. But even in a mental hospital Vah Gogh did not stop work. July 27, 1890 he committed suicide, fatally wounding himself from revolvera.
While analyzing his work – “Olive Trees” it should be said that in this paintings there are all shades of green – the colors of the North, young shoots, spring, freshness. In the painting the artist searches for peace, repose and spiritual balance of nature with the idea of fertility, life, peasants and finally homeland. Van Gogh gives them high horizon, so that it occupies a narrow strip of sky. And we can feel the tragic artist’s conflict with the world. Dualism of earth and sky in Van Gogh’s perception comes from its internal split between past and present. In the Netherlands, to the country and thoughts which he constantly returns, everything was close to the ground and everything was earthy, potatoes, dense, dark. At Van Gogh smear reveals his intention to reveal not only through inner rhythm, but also sense of inspiration. All these strokes, which are located on the surface of the paintings, like iron filings attracted by a magnet so that concluded in the artist’s soul voltage. It is realized in textural noise signal which becomes intrusive internal impulses, spiritual reality, which purports to infect our state. His language is flexible and varied enough to express the complexity and diversity of its relations with the world. Olives excite his imagination, though he puts them in the opposite sense of cypress, which seeks to identify. “In my northern brain, like a nightmare, pushing the idea that I was not up to portray the local foliage. course, I could not completely abandon this attempt, but my efforts were limited by the fact that I pointed out the two stories – cypresses and olive trees, the symbolic language which will be interpreted by another, more powerful and skillful artists “(Tromp). What did he whispered “symbolic language” of the olive leaf? The old, green with silver is the color of the hope and life. Soothing color, to which he returned without end, varies the basic combinations, he layd them on separate strokes and lines, of which he quickly puts image, like carpet or woven structures, only more diluted. This comforting occupation is associated with olive trees, reminds him of the past. “This is – as our Dutch trimmed willow oak plains or undergrowth on our dunes: in the rustling olive heard something very dear, infinitely old and familiar … in them, to use comparison, there is something to Delacroix “(Tromp). One of his confession sheds light on the origin of the symbolic meaning of these countless gardens with olive trees.” I worked this month (November) in the olive groves, enrage me because all these images of “Christ in Gethsemane”, in which nothing is observed. Needless to say, I’m not going to write any biblical stories “(Tromp). So that’s it! I do not whether from the garden still his olive? Once in Arles, he tried, like his friend Bernard and Gauguin, write” Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, “but twice scraped written. “It is because I see here are real olive, I can not, or rather do not want to work without models …” (Tromp). He writes olives so that they look like this awful hour of anguish and the death of a martyr’s choice way, it’s “Agony in the Garden”, the value of which he himself experienced many times. After about himself and he wrote: “My own future – is the cup that will not escape me, therefore, it should drink …” (Tromp). Replacing evangelical image of the hero of his “natural philosophy” mythology – trees – in this case is very revealing. This is evidenced by Emile Bernard: “Oh, how he loved the olive trees and as already tormented him nascent symbolism. He wrotes: “As Christ at Gethsemane I write olive trees.” Van Gogh proved that the “olive tree can become an inexhaustible source of stories” (Tromp). This tree is constantly changing due to differences in lighting and apparent then blue, then purple, then silver-gray-green, allows him applying his style to express whole range of emotions – from the frenetic excitement and hopeless despair to reconciliation and peace with the world that depicted in several versions gardens, thus metaphoric texture – location smears, their running rhythm, swirls, crowding, displacement, offensive and counter-offensive – plays a crucial role in the perception of his paintings. We grasp not only their color, but different “timbre” noises that form these “jarring” surface. It is this stylish “grid”, which has its own special purpose in the system the means and ends the process of painting. Meier-Graefe wrote that “Van Gogh turns to smear means that more decisively determines the nature of his paintings than all the other elements of” .
French art of the XIX century includes striking landscape. Many of the most talented craftsmen were landscapes. There is a question – why the depiction of nature in this era took such an important place in the artistic life of France? It seems that he does not have a comprehensive answer. Shaken brutal civil wars and revolutions, disabused social illusions and theories which have not been able to teach human society to live according to the laws of goodness and justice, people turned to nature as the source of eternal moral values, the embodiment of some higher truth.
Theodore Rousseau believed that “art comes from a small, unknown corner, where a man penetrates into the secrets of nature and beneficial lessons that they there will be equally beneficial for all mankind.” (Adams). Theodore Rousseau is one of the most prominent representatives of the so-called Barbizon School in French painting. Barbizon group of artists wrote mainly landscape, working near the village of Barbizon, near Paris. In opposition of eternal and unchanging nature of life is changing human history, a total conservative social positions Rousseau as an artist and as a person can not help seeing the reaction to the turbulent political life of France at the end of XVIII – first third of the XIX century. If for some artists involved in politics, a reflection of reality and actual problems of social contrasts became the core of their activities, for others the idealization of rural life and the silence was the result of frustration in the fruit, which brought the bourgeois revolution. In the dreams of a better future Rousseau shine through utopianism and negative attitudes towards what brings progress: “If I were king, I would have created life, I would make poetry in life of the nation, I would raise the lower classes, stupefied and mutilated poverty and restoring the beauty of a person, I would return him his natural environment – the landscape and the sky. “(Adams). In the work “Edge of the Woods” 1853. In trees Rousseau sees the importance and greatness. He does not seek to impress the viewer a vivid decorative effect, and gradually introduces it into the picture, making look closely to individual parts and gradually sink into the unhurried contemplation represented species. But Rousseau especially loved writing oaks. Sometimes he painted wood, natural arches and alleys thicket, but very often the artist as it portrayed a group of trees. He carefully and faithfully copied from nature literally every twig, every speck of wood and lie in wait at the same time creating an epic whole image powerful tree. People, animals, in contrast with thick trunks and spreading crowns of oaks look small, their life short compared with the age ageless velikanov.Hudozhnik portrayed not only the trees, but also the atmosphere that surrounds them, seeking to unite in his painting and object space. Rousseau is a huge achievement of his contribution to the development of realistic images of nature. The desire to maximize its veracity, to serve his art nature due to the fact that Rousseau saw beauty in nature ethical and affirmed the value of her image for the arts.
In conclusion it should be said that that two works Rousseau’s “Edge of the Woods” (1853) and Van Gogh’s (Olive Trees) (1889) are different in emotional fullness as two artists are so unique in their life vision. Two of them wanted to give birth to their inner anxiety and worry, and therefore these two masterpieces are full of sadness. It is extraordinary in both works, as there is no identical problems in two different people.
Works Cited
Adams, Steven. The Barbizon School and the Origins of Impressionism, London: 1994.
Silverman, Debora. Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
Tromp, Henk. A Real Van Gogh: How the Art World Struggles with Truth. Amsterdam University Press: 2010.
