Van Gogh's Chair (1888)


Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) painted this picture of a rustic wooden chair in 1888 when he was living in Arles. He had dreams of creating a painters' collective and he painted a number of paintings to decorate his accommodation at the time in anticipation of a visit from Paul Gaughin. This chair was one of these paintings. Van Gogh had significant mental health issues and he had no success during his life. He lived in Arles from 1888-9 and he was inspired by the local landscape and light. His paintings are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. It was believed he was making a collection that not only reflected his personal view but could have been comercially viable.
Van Gogh painted seriously for just over a decade and he was very prolific - over this period he produced c.2100 artworks. From these figures it could be imagined that he worked fairly quickly. At this stage in his artistic career he was using bold colours (previously his paintings were a bit drab which were not popular and did not fit in with the impressionist movement), and he did dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushstrokes. He spread the paint liberally. In early 1887 he did adopt an element of pointilism which is clear in some of his paintings although not so apparent here. For Van Gogh yellow was the colour that meant most to him, he saw it as a symbol of sunlight, light and God, and you see it in many of his paintings e.g. the sunflowers, his face colour in some of his self portraits.
When Van Gogh was introduced to oils in 1882 he was interested in the people and scenes around him as is a characteristic of impressionist artists however he is considered a post impressionist. The Post Impressionist movement emerged as a reaction against impressionists' concern for depicting light and colour in a naturalistic way. Post Impressionism has an emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content. So post impressionists continued using the vivid colours of the impressionists with their thickly applied paint and their real life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasis geometric forms and use unnatural and arbitrary colours.
I love the fact that a painting of a wooden chair and a pipe sitting on some wonky floor tiles now hangs in the National Gallery of London.

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