1890-07-10 · Auvers-sur-Oise · Knot of Silence

Rain over Auvers

The angle at which those lines fall is already speaking, and needs no explanation.

F811 Landscape at Auvers in the Rain 1890

Painting

Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, oil on canvas, 50 × 100 cm. A wide stretch of wheat field, a deep violet sky, the village in the distance. Then, across the whole painting, countless short slanted grey-white lines, all leaning the same way — rain. Those streaks were scratched in with a hard tip, one pass at a time, not laid down with a brush. They were not painted into the landscape. They are a layer placed on top of it. Looking at it is like looking through rain at a field that no longer belongs to you.

Letter

Early July 1890, in a letter to Theo: "They are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness." That letter mentions three large paintings; this is one of them. He did not return to it again, did not explain it as he had explained the Sunflowers or the Cypresses. This is the most direct sentence he ever wrote about his own feelings — and after it, he said little more.

Synaesthetic Precision

Synaesthetic precision in its purest form. This painting needs no explanation in words — the rain streaks are the physical form of the feeling itself: direction (slanted), density (close), speed (fast), temperature (cool), the area covered (the entire canvas). Each streak is a "still" "still" "still." He no longer wrote "I feel sad." He used the physical structure of the image to deliver the sense of being covered. The highest completion of synaesthetic precision — the feeling becomes wholly material.

The Colour Experimenter

The colour here has been deliberately lowered — deep violet sky, dark green wheat, grey-white village in the distance. The saturation is far below the Arles paintings, but it is not the Brabant darkness either. This is filtered brightness — the colour is still present, only refracted and diluted by a layer of water. He did something he had never done before: let the colour step back. The colour experimenter's last experiment — not pushing colour to the limit of saturation, but pulling it back, letting it be seen through a medium.

before

The wheat fields of Auvers, in July; the weather changed, and he watched the rain.

now

Diagonal threads of rain cut the picture on a slant. He is not describing a rainfall but making emotion into a physical shape — letting the viewer feel that slant on the skin.

after

From here to the tree roots, language grows ever scarcer, and the paintings come to look more and more like marks left directly behind.

Events

1890-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 898
In the last weeks at Auvers a northern rain came — slanted, dense; Provence does not have rain like this. The rain of his Brabant childhood, falling again
1890-07 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 898
Completed Landscape at Auvers in the Rain — a wide 50 × 100 cm canvas, deep violet sky, dark green wheat, the distant village in greyish white
1890-07 Synaesthetic Precision
Scratched in countless slanting grey-white streaks with a hard tip — pass after pass. The rain was not painted into the landscape; it was another layer placed on top of it
1890-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 898
'They are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies — and I did not need to go out of my way to express sadness and extreme loneliness.' His most direct self-statement
1890-07 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 898
The colour experimenter's last experiment — not pushing colour to the limit of saturation, but pulling it back, letting it be seen through a medium

From the Letters

Ce sont d'immenses étendues de blés sous des ciels troublés, et je ne me suis pas gêné pour chercher à exprimer de la tristesse, de la solitude extrême.

They are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness.

Letter 898

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org

Letter 898