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Flower Beds in Holland by Gogh, Vincent van

Gogh, Vincent van · c. 1883

View the artwork: Flower Beds in Holland →

This is Vincent van Gogh's first garden painting, Flower Beds in Holland, made around 1883 and now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The subject is not a decorative garden but a commercial bulb farm, and the painting acts as a kind of visual catalogue of early-spring hyacinth varieties.

Look at the strips. Each one is a distinct colour, blue, pink, red, white, yellow, corresponding to a different commercial variety grown for the Amsterdam flower market. The flowers are still low, the soil freshly turned, and a bare tree behind the farmhouses anchors the season precisely in March or April. Van Gogh's low vantage point flattens the field into a near-abstract study of perspective and parallel recession.

Painted in The Hague during his second year as an artist, Van Gogh likely left the work with his family when he moved on. It was later stored by a carpenter, Adrianus Schrauwen, who in 1902 sold it as worthless 'rubbish' to a dealer. It was exhibited that year under the wrong title, Tulpenland, 'Tulip Country', even though every flower here is a hyacinth. The painting passed through several hands before Paul Mellon acquired it in 1955 and donated it to the nation.

A painting that was once discarded as trash now hangs in one of the world's great museums. What does that say about how we learn to see?

#arthistory #vincentvangogh #postimpressionism

Details

The diffuse, directionless light of a Dutch spring overcast unifies the scene; without strong shadows the colour of the flowers reads at full chroma , the sky is doing optical work.
The diffuse, directionless light of a Dutch spring overcast unifies the scene; without strong shadows the colour of the flowers reads at full chroma , the sky is doing optical work.
Heaviest tonal anchor in the scene; its dark volume silhouetted against the pale sky gives the panoramic composition its left-side gravitational weight.
Heaviest tonal anchor in the scene; its dark volume silhouetted against the pale sky gives the panoramic composition its left-side gravitational weight.
The most chromatically saturated stripe in the composition; Van Gogh's boldest colour statement in this otherwise subdued early palette, anticipating his later colour ambition.
The most chromatically saturated stripe in the composition; Van Gogh's boldest colour statement in this otherwise subdued early palette, anticipating his later colour ambition.
The central formal experiment of the painting: Van Gogh used the strips as a ruler-flat perspective exercise, a compositional discipline he was consciously studying in his Hague period.
The central formal experiment of the painting: Van Gogh used the strips as a ruler-flat perspective exercise, a compositional discipline he was consciously studying in his Hague period.
Confirms this is a working commercial bulb farm, not a pleasure garden; the vernacular architecture places the scene squarely in the Dutch agricultural economy of the 1880s.
Confirms this is a working commercial bulb farm, not a pleasure garden; the vernacular architecture places the scene squarely in the Dutch agricultural economy of the 1880s.
Transcript

A flat field of colour, row after row. Not a wild meadow. A working bulb farm. Each rectangle is a different commercial variety. Blue hyacinths, the most intense colour in the scene. Warm pink and red command the highest price. The bare tree tells you it is early spring. In 1902, a carpenter sold this painting as rubbish. Van Gogh was kneeling in the mud to paint it.