The landscape with a strolling couple and a crescent moon is one of the least recognizable landscapes written by Van Gogh in Saint-Remy. And although from the Brazilian city of São Paulo for exhibition purposes, work rarely traveled, it represents
A landscape with a strolling couple and a crescent moon is a curious collection of ordinary Van Gogh themes that are present in his works. At the same time, thanks to some peculiarities, she stands apart from his other works.
In Saint-Remy Van Gogh often painted olives and cypresses, as for trees in the Landscape with a walking couple and a sickle moon, the trees here are not so impressive and not so carefully drawn. Cypresses of Van Gogh know everything. But in this work, they are located somewhere in the distance, added as if at the last moment, and so here there is no greatness and violence, characterizing the cypresses of Vincent. Olives are so small that they resemble a bush, and are far from those proud olive gardens raging on the canvas Olive Grove. “Muted” by their quality trees – this is rather an intentional reception, which is used by the author, so as not to distract attention from the couple walking in the foreground.
The picture is also unusual in that it shows twilight. A huge number of works by Van Gogh, written in Arles and Saint-Remy, were created in bright daylight, under the hot Provencal sun. Twilight landscapes were a more frequent motif in the previous periods of the artist’s work. Later, however, Van Gogh for the most part stopped drawing dusk scenes. And although the artist surprisingly freely and unconventional experimented with the image of heaven – bright white crescents are looking from the sky in the sky, – he rarely painted sunset and dawn in the last years of his life.
Also unusual is the almost square shape of the landscape painting with a walking pair and a crescent moon. With several important exceptions, Van Gogh used mainly standard portrait or landscape canvases, regardless of their size. In Paris, the artist experimented with the shape of the paintings, as in the case of the charming oval work of a basket of sprouted bulbs, although the preference was still given to the usual rectangular shape. This work is interesting by the uncharacteristic relationship of the parties.
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