Hello everyone!

Today I wanted to share an artwork that recently popped up on my Instagram feed and immediately caught my eye. It was Vincent Van Gogh’s Rain-Auvers. While I’m a huge fan of Van Gogh’s works, this particular one I had not seen before so I took a second to look at it a bit more. The unique diagonal lines going through it immediately caught my attention.

The lines Van Gogh added are meant to represent the rainfall over the field. If you look close, he streaks a mixture of lighter and darker blues across the painting and gives the illusion of rainfall as you would see if you were looking across the field. I honestly don’t think I’ve personally seen rain portrayed in a painting before so the lines and this particular technique of representing rain really stood out and I thought it was so interesting. 

What’s also interesting about Van Gogh is that many times he hints at his own emotions and what he was personally experiencing within his paintings. The year he made this work was the same year he shot himself. This piece was in fact only made a short time before he died; This we know means that Van Gogh was not in the best mental state. The rain, and the blue color choice, therefore may be equally as dreary and somber as his mental illness that he was suffering from. 

Featured Image here