Brook by Vincent Van Gogh

This is one of the landscapes written in Auvers-sur-Oise. Moving there after the course of treatment in the hospital Saint-Remy, the artist completely devoted himself to painting. Drawing wide open spaces and small cozy natural places, views of the village and green rural gardens, the artist found a kind of shelter from his troubles in contemplation of nature, almost not distorted and untouched by human civilization.

Nature has always been for Van Gogh the best “interlocutor”, but the artist was not inherent in the desire to depict it photographically. Van Gogh’s landscapes are sharply subjective, they express personal experiences, sometimes at a peak. One example is this work.

If you discard the emotional component, you can see a full lyricism composition. A small stream flows into the distance, surrounded by thickets of reeds, thick bushes and trees. But the color scheme and the picturesque manner fill the landscape with alarm and confusion. Sharp branches of trees, like tongues of flame, rush to the dark sky, which seems to crush its screaming, dense blue. This shade becomes even thicker, reflected in the water of the stream, touched by a blackening ripple.

Yellow thick reeds spit in different directions, among them a narrow path was lost. They seem illuminated, but there is not a hint of light in the sky. The landscape becomes threatening, uncomfortable and cramped, conveying the author’s state of mind.