Ralph Skea

This glorious gift book presents Van Goghs lifelong love affair with the garden. Illustrated with an extraordinary range of works, from iconic oils such as Irises to exquisite etchings and intimate sketches, the book is a visual feast. The images are illuminated by a sensitive commentary, which augments the well-known facts of Van Goghs life by exploring the importance of the garden locations he sought out wherever he went.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) felt a profound empathy with the natural environment, and considered the spiritual essence of trees to be comparable with that of human figures. "Vincents Trees" traces Van Goghs development as a painter of trees in the natural landscape from his home province of North Brabant, through Paris to Provence. Ralph Skeas elegant prose is accompanied by Van Goghs vibrant illustrations of trees, which range from pencil and ink sketches to watercolours and oil. Stylistic experiments encompassing Pointillism and compositions inspired by Japanese prints give way to the expressive, painterly depictions of his later work. The book also includes quotes from Van Goghs letters, which convey the depth of his feeling for the natural landscape, and the force with which it affected him.

Despite his posthumous fame as a painter of flowers, still-lifes, gardens, landscapes and city scenes, during his lifetime Vincent van Gogh believed that his portraits constituted his most important works. Although as an artist he was ‘touched by so many different things’, he was nevertheless committed to the art of portraiture – a quality that distinguished him from his contemporaries. Van Gogh was passionate in his avoidance of bland, photographic resemblances, in the hope of capturing the essential character of his models by means of expressive colour and brushwork. Showcasing a dramatic set of portraits created during Van Gogh’s ten-year career, this book reflects the strong visual impact with which the artist captured the diversity of contemporary life. In his many portraits, we can discern the artist’s desire to record expressively a number of themes, from the plight of the agricultural workers in his native Brabant and the destitution of prostitutes and their children in urban Europe, to the lives of his cosmopolitan acquaintances in Paris, including café owners and art dealers. It was here that he began his remarkable sequence of self-portraits. With reference to Van Gogh’s extensive correspondence, Skea elaborates how the artist perceived his chosen subjects as would a writer, and how he felt that his portraits should somehow evoke what he considered to be the spiritual underpinning of human existence Table of Contents Introduction: ‘And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter…’ • 1. The Netherlands • 2. Paris • 3. Arles • 4. Saint-Rémy-deProvence • 5. Auvers-sur-Oise • Sources of Quotations, Further Reading