Why yellow was Van Gogh’s favourite colour – The Art Newspaper

Yellow: Past Van Gogh’s Color opened this week in Amsterdam (till 17 Might). The Van Gogh Museum’s new exhibition focuses on work by a spread of artists during which yellow is the predominant color.

In Arles, when Vincent was on the top of his powers, he wrote in nice pleasure to his brother Theo: “Sunshine, a lightweight which, for need of a greater phrase I can solely name yellow — pale sulphur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How lovely yellow is!”

Though we understand the solar and its gentle as yellow, it truly emits white gentle. Daylight is scattered when it passes by earth’s environment, making the sky seem blue and the solar yellow.

Van Gogh’s most well-known yellow portray is, in fact, his Sunflowers. The prime model (August 1888) is now at London’s Nationwide Gallery, however he quickly went on to make two copies with a yellow background, one in all which is in Amsterdam (January 1889) and the opposite in Tokyo (December 1888-January 1889).

The Amsterdam image, which is displayed at first of the brand new exhibition, is the results of Van Gogh’s effort to attain what he described as a “excessive yellow word”. He truly used three shades of the pigment chrome yellow: pale lemon, a deeper shade, and an orange hue.

Though chrome yellow pigments initially present a shiny color, sadly its depth doesn’t final. It fades and darkens over time. The Van Gogh Museum subsequently now shows their portray below comparatively low lighting, lower than 50 lux of sunshine. Simply suppose, his Sunflowers would have initially appeared much more intense than they do at the moment.

Between April 1888 and April 1889, Vincent requested Theo to ship him no fewer than 66 massive tubes of yellow chrome paint from Paris. Which means that Van Gogh would have used, on common, over a 3rd of a giant tube of yellow for each one in all his Arles work.

The exhibition Yellow: Past Van Gogh’s Color emphasises that within the late-Nineteenth century in France yellow turned considered the color of modernity. This was partly due to the yellow-covered paperback books revealed with modern authors corresponding to Emile Zola and the Goncourt brothers. In England, the concept was taken up within the Eighteen Nineties with the publication of the literary quarterly The Yellow E book, which carried illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley and was supported by Oscar Wilde.

Van Gogh got down to use yellow to evoke feelings, typically to mirror the life-giving power of the solar. He significantly employed it when portray ripened fields of wheat below the blazing solar of Provence. For Van Gogh, it introduced gentle and life-giving power. In his letters, he described the solar as cheerful, glowing, and on one event as “mysterious”.

Van Gogh’s love of yellow virtually actually impressed his colleague Paul Gauguin, who a number of weeks after his return to Paris from Arles started a collection of 11 prints. Often called the Volpini suite, they’re printed on a vivid yellow paper.

The Amsterdam present, curated by Ann Blokland and Edwin Becker, consists of eight Van Gogh work, all from the museum’s personal assortment. Amongst them are Quinces, Lemons, Pears and Grapes (September-October 1887), for which Van Gogh painted a body, appropriately primarily in hues of yellow.

One other key work within the present is The Yellow Home (September 1888), depicting the house which he would quickly share with Gauguin for 9 weeks. As Vincent wrote to Theo: “It’s painted yellow exterior, whitewashed inside — within the full sunshine.”

At Van Gogh’s funeral, on 30 July 1890, his mates recalled yellow as his favorite color. Emile Bernard wrote that sunflowers had been organized round his coffin. Yellow represented “the image of the sunshine that he sought in individuals’s hearts in addition to in artistic endeavors”.

Different artists in Yellow: Past Van Gogh’s Color embrace Edouard Manet, Aristide Maillol, Cuno Amiet, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondriaan and Olafur Eliasson.

So carefully is Van Gogh now related to yellow that the Van Gogh Museum has chosen to current its web site homepage in opposition to a background of this color. Though few internet viewers in all probability consciously make the connection, color can have an emotional affect.

Different Van Gogh information:

A brand new e book has simply been revealed on the artist’s 12 months on the asylum in 1889-90: Vincent van Gogh in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Printed by Milan-based Silvana Editoriale, it contains six essays by primarily native authors who know the realm intimately.

Martin Bailey is a number one Van Gogh specialist and particular correspondent for The Artwork Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions on the Barbican Artwork Gallery, Compton Verney/Nationwide Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written quite a lot of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Night time: Van Gogh on the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are additionally now accessible in a extra compact paperback format.

His different current books embrace Residing with Vincent van Gogh: The Properties & Landscapes that formed the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which offers an outline of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Pal Van Gogh/Emile Bernard offers the primary English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please e-mail vangogh@theartnewspaper.com

Please word that he doesn’t undertake authentications.

Discover all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh right here