The Sower Outskirts of Arles in the Background

Vincent van Gogh

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Keywords: SowerOutskirtsArlesBackground

Work Overview

The Sower Outskirts of Arles in the Background
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1888; Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France *
Style: Cloisonnism
Genre: genre painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 40 x 33 cm
Location: Hammer Museum ( University of California), Los Angeles, CA, US


The audience is drawn into the painting by the glowing disk of the rising sun in citron-yellow which Van Gogh intended to represent the divine, replicating the nimbus from Eugène Delacroix's Christ Asleep during the Tempest. Van Gogh depicts the cycle of life in the sowing of wheat against the field of mature wheat,[10] there is death, like the setting sun, but also rebirth. The sun will rise again. Wheat has been cut, but the sower plants seeds for a new crop. Leaves have fallen from the tree in the distance, but leaves will grow again.[38]


In The Sower Van Gogh uses complementary colors to bring intensity to the picture. Blue and orange flecks in the plowed field and violet and gold in the spring wheat behind the sower.[10] Van Gogh used colors symbolically and for effect, when speaking of the colors in this work he said: I couldn't care less what the colours are in reality.[39]


Inspired by Jean-François Millet van Gogh made several paintings after The Sower by Millet. Van Gogh made seven other "Sower" paintings, one in 1883 and the other six after this work.