#storybehindtheart
In the summer 1889, Vincent Van Gogh painted a series with cypresses while in St Remy de Provence. He wrote ”I have a wheatfield, very yellow and very bright, perhaps the brightest canvas I’ve done. The cypresses still preoccupy me, I’d like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me that no one has yet done them as I see them. It’s beautiful as regards lines and proportions, like an Egyptian obelisk. And the green has such a distinguished quality.It’s the dark patch in a sun-drenched landscape, but it’s one of the most interesting dark notes, the most difficult to hit off exactly that I can imagine. Now they must be seen here against the blue, in the blue, rather.”
His friend Paul Signac was settled in Cassis and invited Van Gogh to visit him “Why don’t you come to do a study or two in this pretty country?”
Theo, Vincent’s brother, wrote “I think you choose fine subjects for paintings, those tufted trees full of freshness and bathed in the light of the sun are marvellously beautiful.”
The post is liked by the Pere Tanguy, who would sell (and sometimes give) paint to the impressionists in Paris and support their work by exhibiting them in his store.
Sources:
Vincent Van Gogh’letters : letter 783 June 25, 1889 - letter 793 July 29 1889 – 755 April 12, 1889
Vincent's cypress, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 14" x 11" (36 x 28 cm)