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Focus: a look, a work

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Van Gogh Rge Red Vine at Montmajour

RED VINE AT ARLES (LA VIGNE ROUGE)

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), 1888 - Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia

Could this harvest scene have really taken place?

Van Gogh painted two landscapes featuring vines in oils –The Green Vine and The Red Vine – during his period in Arles, where he lived from 20th February 1888. The Red Vine is one of the artist’s best-known paintings, and often said to be the only one sold in his lifetime – in February 1890, five months before his suicide.

He produced a harvest scene in late October, near Arles, depicting red vines.

This is decidedly odd: although Arles is in a Mediterranean region, a late-October harvest is still terribly late. Usually, the grape harvest takes place before the vines turn red. There is a plethora of grape-pickers – twenty-one! Night has almost fallen. What to make of this harvest scene? Could it have really taken place as Van Gogh depicts it, so late in the year? Let’s examine the evidence in Van Gogh’s Letters to his brother Théo... 

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Find out more and go to the work in its period setting  >> 

Paintings are presented in their original size and in a typical period setting (Fr.)  >>

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