Soon at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam: the exhibition Dreams of nature. Symbolisme van Van Gogh tot Kandinsky.
Symbolism is the in the focus in the past years.
It is an art movement at the end of the 19th century, as a reaction to Impressionism. Artists painted dreams and visions instead of visible reality, as a response to the growing industrialization and materialism in Europe. Their works often reflected a desire for beauty, aesthetic refinement, nobility, spirituality, mythology and abstraction.
Symbolism united a small group of artists who dreamed and theorized about the unity of the arts.
A number of works by Van Gogh can be called symbolic, particularly the work that was created in contact with the symbolist dreamer and Gauguin. But the fact that Van Gogh worked starting from ideas, and spent much time with a particular theme before he made a painting, brings him close to other symbolists. His paintings have deeper meanings, hidden symbolism, and references to literature and music.
Here are a few examples of Symbolist themes of paintings by Vincent van Gogh:
Nature and suggestion: more than a faithful representation of reality, the landscapes of Symbolists are a reflection of the feelings evoked by nature in the artist. Here “Willows at sunset”: note the sun’s rays.
Dreams and visions: Some symbolists painted dreams and visions; the world behind the observable reality. Here Van Gogh’s “Memory of the Garden at Etten” Arles, 1888.
The city as a mysterious dream-like landscape: Cafe Terrace at Night
The cosmos: Van Gogh landscapes show his ideas on natural forces, cosmic energy and the insignificance of man in the face of nature.
Vincent van Gogh, Sterrennacht, 1889
(Here a fantastic interactive Video Starry Night)
In zijn atelier bewaarde James Ensor (zie de tentoonstelling in het Gemeentemuseum Den Haag) doodshoofden, maskers en hoofddeksels, die vanaf 1888 regelmatig in zijn werk voorkomen. In Ensors werk had de schedel een morbide, ironische en fantastische connotatie en komt vaak als zelfportret voor. De schedel is blijkbaar de “ik”-vorm van Ensors maskers: Ensors eigen lachend masker.
Mij bevalt het als de dood een deel van het leven is, en als de doden vrolijk meedoen in het leven. Magisch, fantastisch, menselijk.
Ook Vincent van Gogh heeft kort daarvoor een soortgelijk zelfportret gemaakt:
Vincent van Gogh, Schedel met brandende sigaret, 1885
De schedel van Van Gogh houdt het midden tussen (zelf)portret en stilleven.
The most beautiful spring paintings have been made by Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh, Peach tree blossom, 1888
Vincent van Gogh, Almond tree blossom, 1890
Vincent van Gogh, Pear tree blossom
Like many modern artists Vincent van Gogh was inspired by Japanse art. He made a copy of a prune tree print by Utagawa Hiroshige:
Vincent van Gogh, Prune tre blossom after Hiroshige (1887)
Utagawa Hiroshige, Prune trees in Kameido, 1857
Van Gogh chose other colors than Hiroshige, and added Japanse signs from another print.
Van Gogh was also strongly influenced by Jean-Francois Millet (see here for the Starry Night)
Here is Millet’s spring: 
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Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, 1886, te zien in het Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret met filt hoed, 1887
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, 1887
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret met strohoed, 1887
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret met strohoed, 1887 (Parijs)
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, 1888
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, 1888, voor Gauguin
Vincent van Gogh zelfportret met verbonden oor, jan 1889
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, aug 1889
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, sep 1889
Vincent van Gogh, Zelfportret, sep 1889
Vertalen Duits Vertaalbureau Duits
Edvard Munch is strongly influenced by Vincent van Gogh, and painted, like Van Gogh, a very expressive and symbolistic Starry Night. Munch as well as Van Gogh show the cosmic powers and the insignificance of man against nature.
Edvard Munch, Starry night, 1926
Vincent van_Gogh, Sterrennacht, 1889
interactieve video Starry Night
| Vincent van Gogh, Sterrennacht over de Rhone |
Van Gogh again was inspired for his Starry night by Jean François Millet.
Jean Francois Millet, Starry night, 1851
Vincent van Gogh self-portret 1888 als zen monk (bonze), for Gauguin (alluding to common interest in Japonism)
Paul Gaugin, Selfprotrait for Vincent van Gogh 1888
Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait for Charles Laval 1888
Paul Gauguin, Self-portrait for Charles Laval 1888
When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles, van Gogh hoped for friendship and for his uptopian idea of a collective of artists. But Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, a fact that often frustrated van Gogh. They quarreled fiercely about art; van Gogh felt an increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him, as a situation he described as one of “excessive tension” reached crisis point. In the course of a conflict with Gauguin Van Gogh cut off his left ear, although some maintain that it was Gauguin who cut it off.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait with ear cut off 1889
…two portraits that Van Gogh made of himself and of Gauguin:
Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh’s chair 1888
Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin’s chair, 1888
All self-portraits by Vincent van Gogh in chronological order click here
From the 1860s, ukiyo-e, Japanese wood-block prints, became a source of inspiration for many European impressionist painters in France and elsewhere, and eventually for Art Nouveau.
Claude Monet, Madame Monet in a red kimono, 1876
Several of Van Gogh’s paintings imitate ukiyo-e in style and in motif. He collected Japanese prints and painted The Courtesan in 1887 after finding an ukiyo-e by Kesai Eisen on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustré in 1886.
The Dutch painter Georg Hendrik Breitner, in the 1880′s a friend of Vincent van Gogh, painted in this period e (1883-99) a seieris of girls in kimono.
Georg Breitner
Georg Breitner
The Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam owns a painting by Breitner with a girl in dark blue kimono looking in a mirror and attaching an earring
At the quiet cemetery in Leiden Anna van Gogh-Carbentus is burried, Vincent van Gogh’s mother.
Vincent made this portrait of his mother (after a photograph), in Arles 1888.
see Japonaiserie (Van Gogh)
Van Gogh made copies of two Hiroshige prints. He enhanced their colours and added borders filled with calligraphic characters he borrowed from other prints
Vincent van Gogh Der blühende Pflaumenbaum nach Hiroshige (1887)
Utagawa Hiroshige, Plum orchard at Kameido, 1857
Hiroshiges “Unexpected rain brigde Atake“(1857)
Vincent van Gogh, “Bridge in the rain Hiroshige “1887.
In the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam the exhibition “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night” has been opened.
“The Colors of the Night” are in Van Gogh’s case especially the colors of dawn and sunset- the moon or full moon cannot be found in many paintings.
The most important painting by Van Gogh showing a full moon comes from the Kröller-Müller Museum, “Enclosed Field with Sheaves and Rising Moon” 1889:
Van Gogh made this painting in the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Remy.
He could see this wheat fieldfrom his bedroom.
The moonlight is indicated by small white (originally pink) brush strokes in the painted air and scenery.
Van Gogh was not happy with this painting.
He mentionend it together with the famous “Starry Night” (see below) in a letter.
He was saying that he had exaggerated the composition in both paintings, and that both paintings resembled old woodcuts.
Van Gogh’s moon nights at are very expressive, and also symbolical: in his landscapes, he showed images of the forces of nature, cosmic energy, and the insignificance of man against nature.
In the painting ” White House at Night “(1890) is a small, but full and bright” moon” to see, but it is not the moon, it is Venus.
More often than the full moon Van Gogh painted a crescent moon (see here )
The waning moon he painted in his starry night, in the year 1889 in Saint-Remy.
The stars and the waning moon in a rhythm of light and movement behind the cypresses and the city.
Interactive video Starry Night