Three Van Gogh paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Three Van Gogh paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

Evening Landscape, 1885, (oil on canvas)

In April 1885, while concentrating on the series devoted to the Potato eaters, Van Gogh wrote to his brother, 'I am also working on a red sunset'. As in the portraits of country folk eating in a shadowy room, this landscape, which is almost norcturnal, allows him to paint the darkness he so admired in 17th century Netherlandish painting. In this first Dutch period which preceded his move to Paris, where his palette became more luminous and colourful owing to the influence of the new artistic trends that emerged around him, Van Gogh's style is characterised by a realism with strong tenebrist undertones.

The Stevedores in Arles, 1888, (oil on canvas)

When Van Gogh arrived in Arles in 1888 seeking the luminous atmosphere of the French Midi, he eschewed pointillist and Impressionist methods in favour of more synthetic forms and louder colours. The Stevedores in Arles, which clearly shows this stylistic change is painted with thick, elongated brushstrokes and marked colour contrasts. It shows a view of the Rhone with a blazing sunset in which the motifs of the composition - clearly influenced by Japanese art - stand out against the light. 

'I saw a magnificent and strange effect this evening', he wrote to his brother Theo. 'A very big boat loaded with coal on the Rhone, moored to the quay. Seen from above it was all shining and wet with a shower; the water was yellowish-white and clouded pearl gray; the sky, lilac with an orange streak in the west; the town, violet. On the boat some poor workmen in dirty blue and white came and went carrying the cargo on shore. It was pure Hokusai'.

Les Vessenots in Auvers, 1890, (oil on canvas)

This landscape of Les Vessenots, on the outskirts of Auvers, shows a group of old country cottages placed just below a raised horizon; further down, wheat fields stretch to the bottom of the canvas, broken only by a few swaying trees, The narrow colour range - mainly bright greens and yellows - and the nervous, agitated brushstrokes following a repetitive, undulating rhythm, are characteristic of the artist's work in his final period.

Van Gogh painted a large number of landscapes in the weeks before his death, always working outdoors. By that time, he was prey to all manner of conflicting moods: the vast expanses of fertile cropland gave him a sense of freedom, but at the same time intensified the feeling of melancholy and loneliness which would eventually lead to his suicide.