Analysis of Olive Trees by Vincent Van Gogh

The painting Olive Trees, now at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is one of a series of ten or twelve paintings of olive orchards, which Van Gogh painted in 1889 while living at the asylum of Saint-Remy. This painting is a landscape accomplished in bright, complementary colors, with Van Gogh’s characteristically brisk brushwork. The image is divided roughly into thirds, with the middle zone, the trees, being highly capricious. The brushstrokes describe the lay of the land, the movement of the wind in the trees, and the rays of the sun. The sun itself is hugely misrepresented in size, and highlighted also by an outline of orange. It dominates the picture and takes on perhaps a “supernatural” aspect, possibly representing deity or faith. The curved trees all lean, even quiver, away from the center of the painting. They cast violet shadows which shouldn’t be possible, given the placement of the sun: Realism is sacrificed for the content. The most prominent of these shadows is at the center of the foreground, and is not associated with any one tree. One could see this central shadow as the thing from which the trees are bending. The base of each tree is painted with red lines that ambiguously outline where the shadows would fall if the sun were directly overhead. Both the ground and the trees have a singularly wave appearance, while the sun is more stable, and the distant mountains are still.

Olive trees reflects the artist’s Dutch heritage by its origination and in his passion for bright colors, which comes from a Dutchman’s reaction and love for colors. The main influences perceptible in this painting are those of Millet, Romanticism, and the Impressionists.

The link from Olive Trees to Van Gogh’s idol, Jean-Francoise Millet, ...

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...f the shadows is sprinkled with the orange of the ground, and the blue-violet of the mountains is both mixed with and adjacent to the yellow of the sky. The brushstrokes that carry this out are inspired by the Impressionists, but are more abundant and blunter than those an Impressionist would use.

Like many of Van Gogh’s paintings, Olive Trees commences as a landscape and expands into a complex work, disclosing influences from other times and places. Using the color theory and separated brushstrokes of the Impressionists, the movement and vivid colors of the Romantics, and lighting and composition inspired by Millet, Van Gogh achieves the potency and significance that characterizes his work. Van Gogh’s paintings can’t possibly be mistaken for those of another artist of his time because, despite the fact that all of his means have criterion, his end results do not.