Arles, September 1888
Oil on canvas
Index:
F 550; JH 1577
Timeline:[83-84-85-86-87-88-89-90]
On view at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, NY
In February 1888, Vincent van Gogh left the cold, dreary winter in Paris and moved to the town of Arles. There, inspired by the variegation and light of southern France, he created more than 200 paintings in 15 months, including The Old Mill. Van Gogh depicted the mill, popularly known as tabatière or Jonquet, using a thick application of paint, exaggerated angles, and vibrant effects.
Van Gogh was one of the first artists to free color from a merely descriptive function. Objects did not have to be reproduced on the canvas as they were seen in real life. Instead, he used color to express his feelings about the subject. A lapis-painted mountain range against a sea foam sky represents his joy in the beauty, light, and warmth of the south.
Although van Gogh was often criticized for working too quickly, the careful brushwork of this painting reveals otherwise; you can clearly see where he varied the direction of his paint to delineate different parts of the landscape. Van Gogh once wrote that he thought about each painting at length in advance, thus he could work fairly quickly when he finally began to paint. His response to criticism was, “When anyone says that such and such is done too quickly . . . they have looked at it too quickly.”
– Description from the museum’s website
In his own words
Van Gogh mentioned the painting in a letter to his brother Theo, sent from Arles on September 12, 1888 [letter 535].
“Ideas for my work are coming to me in swarms, so though I’m alone, I have no time to think or to feel, I go on painting like a steam engine. I think there will hardly ever be a standstill again. And my view is that you will never find a live studio-ready made, but that it is created from day to day by patient work and going on and on in one place. I have a study of an old mill painted in broken tones like the oak tree on the rock [Ed’s. note, a reference to F466, Landscape with a Carriage and a Train], that study you said you had framed along with “The Sower.”
He also mentioned the painting in a letter sent to Theo around September 17, 1888 [letter 539].