“Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon”
This oil on canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh, is titled “Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon” and it dates to May 1890.
It was painted the last year of his life, and during Van Gogh’s last month of his voluntary stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy in southern France. Van Gogh hoped that a stay at the asylum would create some sort of order and regiment in his daily life that he was not able to produce on his own. Unfortunately, it did not help him.
This is one of 18 paintings in his ‘Olive Trees’ series which he painted once he was allowed to take walks outside of the asylum’s walls. He was particularly fond of how the olive trees contrasted with the sky. At this point in his life, Van Gogh had been at the asylum for twelve months already and was still in an unfortunate state of mind.
During this time, his access to the outside world was limited, viewed either under painting excursions with constant supervision or through his barred windows. He created many paintings based off of studies, creating visual landscapes only existing in his mind. The authors, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, in Van Gogh: The Life, believe this may be a self-portrait with Madame Ginoux, a woman from Arles who was the subject of much of his art during this period. They are walking freely through the trees with a dog at twilight, which might have given him a hopeful glimpse of the life and sort of freedom he wanted.
Although Van Gogh died too young, during his short life he produced a huge catalogue of work. I am constantly coming across new pieces of his that I have never seen before. And unlike most other artists, he wrote many long letters to his brother, Theo, in which he discusses his struggle with art, and life. It makes him so much more tangible and relatable.
A passage from one of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother explains his vision in this piece more clearly. He said:
“I look for the contrasting effects in the foliage, which changes with the tones of the sky. At times, when the tree bares its pale blossoms and big blue flies, emerald fruit beetles and cicadas in great numbers fly about, everything is immersed in pure blue. Then, as the bronzed foliage takes on more mature tones, the sky is radiant and streaked with green and orange, and then again, further into autumn, the leaves take on violet tones something of the color of a ripe fig, and this violet effect manifests itself most fully with the contrast of the large, whitening sun within its pale halo of light lemon.”
Van Gogh was able to directly translate his vision onto the canvas.
“Couple Walking among Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with Crescent Moon” is currently on display at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, in São Paulo, Brazil.
For more on Vincent Van Gogh, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
