Vincent van Gogh
He came to bright color late, then used it like a voice: red against green for 'terrible passions'.
- Lived
- 1853–1890
- Output
- About 860 oil paintings
- Letters
- 600+ to his brother Theo
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) painted for barely a decade and made about 860 oil paintings, most of them in his last two years. His early Dutch work is dark, all browns and earth colors. In 1886 he moved to Paris to live with his brother Theo, met the Impressionists and the painters around them, studied Japanese prints, and his palette brightened fast.
In Arles in 1888 he used color to express feeling more than to describe things. He built his Sunflowers from several shades of the new chrome yellow. For The Night Café he set blood-red walls against a green billiard table, telling Theo he wanted to show 'the terrible passions of humanity' through red and green, painter's-wheel complements.
His letters, more than 600 to Theo alone, are a running color diary of what he mixed and what each color should do. In 1889, in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, he painted The Starry Night, with swirling blues around yellow stars and moon. A curious footnote: one of his first teachers, for a few weeks in The Hague, was the painter Anton Mauve, no relation to the color mauve.
Some colors are no longer what he painted. Red lake pigments have faded: he described his Bedroom's walls as pale violet, and they now look blue. Some chrome yellows have darkened toward brown. Researchers use his letters and paint analysis to reconstruct how the canvases looked when new (see cochineal and carmine).
Swatches
- Chrome yellow · Sunflowers (approx.)
- Blood red · Night Café walls (approx.)
- Green · Night Café billiard table (approx.)
- Pale violet · Bedroom walls as painted (approx.)
- Blue · Bedroom walls today (approx.)
- Blue · Starry Night sky (approx.)
Colors
Sources
- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters (vangoghletters.org).
- Van Gogh Museum. The Bedroom: research into faded colors.
- Monico, L. et al. (2011). Degradation process of lead chromate in paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Analytical Chemistry 83(4).
- Wikipedia, 'Vincent van Gogh'.
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.