Vincent van Gogh - The Sower [1888]

Vincent van Gogh - The Sower [1888], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In a letter to his sister in September 1888 Vincent van Gogh writes, "I do not need Japanese things any more, since here I am in Japan".

The Sower, painted in October 1888 in Arles, might have been painted in such a mood. West and East are here fused. The sower looms on the left, his immemorial activity hallowed by the huge ball of the rising sun; a tree beside him divides the picture diagonally and accents the fields still lying in violet twilight. The symbolic tree is an old Japanese motif; van Gogh had copied Hiroshige’s plum trees, in Paris, from "100 views of famous places in Edo". This is also the dominant theme of the painting.

[Oil on canvas, 64 x 80.5 cm]