Vincent van Gogh – Cypresses Metropolitan Museum: part 3

Description of Vincent van Gogh’s painting "Cypresses

It was no secret that the famous Dutch painter was plagued by bouts of insanity. After one such attack in 1889, Van Gogh was hospitalized in Saint-Rémy for the mentally ill, where he was free to paint.

This period in Van Gogh’s life greatly influenced his work and his outlook on life. It was in the hospital that the artist became interested in cypresses. These trees, which grew mostly in cemeteries, were associated with the theme of death, which became close to the artist. He compared the trees of sorrow to the beautiful and well-proportioned Egyptian obelisks. In 1889 he painted Cypresses in oil on canvas.

The centerpiece of the painting are two slender cypresses. They are so tall that it seems as if the artist did not have enough canvas to depict the trees in full height. At the roots of the trees you can see the blooming grass, and in the background - blue mountains, blue sky, white fluffy clouds and the moon. The silhouettes of the trees are the only vertical elements in this horizontal landscape.

The artist depicted the cypresses in a way that no one had done before him. Several layers of paint create the effect of illuminating the dark tree crowns with golden sunlight. There is a sense of movement and nervous tension in this painting. Van Gogh strokes the paint in a spiral motion, creating a swirling effect and associating it with flames rising to the sky. The slender trees seem to tremble and bend in the strong gusts of wind as an echo of the vibrations shaking the artist’s body at the moment of another attack.