Vincent Van Gogh had an uncanny knack
for getting to the root of the matter.
Folding his initial thought on cypresses
into a letter of April 1888 from the south of France,
the Dutch artist sized up the potential he foresaw
and famously realized
of picturing the region’s distinctive evergreens
under star-strewn night skies or above golden fields of wheat.
Yet it was not until more than a year later
after he left the Provençal town of Arles
to take refuge at the nearby asylum of Saint-Rémy
that this spark of inspiration gave rise
to his iconic pictures of the flame-like trees.
Those epic works take their place in a presentation
that fills in the backstory of his invention
for the first time.
Following the arc of Van Gogh’s progressive exploration
of the towering evergreens
as they gained ground in his artistic thinking
over the course of his two-year sojourn in Provence,
this thematic survey retraces his longstanding preoccupation
with a motif that he found captivating and challenging
in equal measure.
To an extent that has gone unrecognized,
Van Gogh brought his trademark ambition, determination,
and a great degree of consideration and reconsideration
to giving inimitable form to the cypresses
in images that are as commanding, robust, and enduring
as the centuries-old evergreens.
They did not spring to life in a fit of fervid inspiration
or emotive outpourings of paint.
Astonished that “no one has yet done them as I see them,”
he prevailed to give signature form to the cypresses
in works as striking for their originality
as for their continuity of vision,
from his first inspired response to the trees
in his only dated drawing from Arles
to his last try at satisfying his ambition
in the studio composition,
painted just before he left the asylum in May 1890.
After two years in Paris,
Van Gogh made his way to the town of Arles,
primed to invest his art with the rich color and rich sun
of the glorious South.
The most eye-catching and storied fixture of the countryside
immediately struck a chord with the Dutch artist.
The robust, long-living evergreens
not only carried age-old associations with death, rebirth,
and immortality, but few motifs resonated more strongly
with his profound appreciation for the
enduring and consoling aspects of nature.
This gallery highlights the place Van Gogh reserved
for the statuesque evergreens
in works that take us from drawbridge scenes
and blossoming orchards
that record the first signs of spring in Provence
to verdant gardens infused with fresh impetus
as summer gives way
to Paul Gauguin’s fateful arrival that fall.
Cypresses debut in two works made in March 1888
that served to introduce and showcase
the advances Van Gogh was primed to make
now that he had arrived in the sunlit south of France.
One is this drawing,
with its evocative pairing of the region’s cypresses
with pollard willows, reminiscent of his Dutch roots.
The other is a sketch sent in his initial letter
from the south of France to fellow artist Émile Bernard,
illustrating the idea he had
for an enterprising drawbridge scene
of sailors coming back with their sweethearts
toward the town against a huge yellow sun.
The letter sketch is a precious record
of a painting he failed to bring to fruition.
It sets a precedent for picturing the cypress
in tandem with strolling couples at sunset or twilight,
a theme he explored for the next two years
in works imbued with like poetic sentiment and license,
tinged with a nostalgia for the north.
By April 1888,
Van Gogh was immersed in a springtime campaign
devoted to capturing the dazzling effects
of orchards in bloom.
Intrigued and invested in doing justice
to the motif of an orchard bordered by cypresses,
Van Gogh was prompted to go above and beyond
his usual practice.
He used this oil study as a model
for a larger, more finished painting
and executed its pendant
in an entirely different pointillist style.
The tall, somber outliers that stood guard as windbreaks
around the delicate fruit trees
enjoyed his rapt attention,
ushering in a new level of engagement
with the towering evergreens
and anchoring his ongoing investigations of a motif
that would continue to court, coax, and vex his ambitions.
The park across the street
from Van Gogh’s yellow house in Arles
placed cypresses right at his doorstep.
They beckoned his interest for plein-air views
that captured the changing beauty of nature
as it unfolded from season to season,
and for a distinct group of works
made expressly for the bedroom he was readying
for Paul Gauguin’s year-end stay.
Gauguin’s stay in Arles
from October 23rd to December 23rd, 1888
came to an abrupt and infamous end,
after which Van Gogh sought treatment in the local hospital
both for his ear and his faltering mental health
before decamping for the asylum in nearby Saint-Rémy.
Nestled in the foothills of the Alpilles Mountains,
the former monastery placed him in a dramatic setting,
more rustic and rugged than the flat, cultivated landscape
of nearby Arles.
Under the care of doctors
who diagnosed his condition as a form of epilepsy
and allotted a spare room to use as a makeshift studio,
the artist forged ahead at a staggering pace.
Once he was granted permission that June
to explore the rolling countryside
beyond the walls of the asylum,
Van Gogh advanced a painting campaign
that he revisited in equally dynamic drawings.
This initiative represented
his most formidable and concerted effort
to tackle the cypresses in earnest.
In swift, confident succession with increasing intensity,
Van Gogh drew upon studies from nature and studio invention
as he tweaked earlier preoccupations into place,
evolving a forceful style of expression
that wed evocative color
with anti-naturalistic line in rich passages of impasto.
As a signpost of the region
and a beacon of hope, perseverance, and resilience,
the cypress was bound to enjoy particular resonance
during this chapter in his career.
Retreating to his makeshift studio in mid-June,
Van Gogh ventured to reach for the stars
from the moment he laid in the emphatic strokes
of dark, muted colors
to assert the haunting presence of the cypresses
in the foreground of this long-envisioned composition.
In a determined bid
to embrace Gauguin’s picture-making strategies,
Van Gogh summoned his imagination and stylization
into shaping what he had once called
“a more exalting and consoling nature.”
This like-minded composite work swirls around the idea
of death giving way to everlasting life, renewal,
or rebirth just as day gives way to night,
with the comforts of home
tucked into a sleepy Dutch village.
It ushered in a more profound level of engagement
with the flame-like trees, reigniting earlier preoccupations
and fueling the resolve and expressive intensity
of his successive plein-air views.
In the wake of painting his mesmerizing nocturnal scene
with set ambition to channel Gauguin’s approach,
Van Gogh asserted his authority
in this stunning daytime rejoinder in plein-air,
on his terms and on his turf.
He reserved a defining role for the cypresses
from the start, enhancing the presence of this dark patch
in the sun-drenched landscape
as he built up the trees’ sinuous forms
and ramped up their tonal contrast.
Within this richly orchestrated composition,
his vision crystallized.
All the elements of nature bend, curve, and sway
to the same windswept rhythms
falling into place in perfect harmony.
The Starry Night is displayed alongside
Wheat Field With Cypresses for the first time since 1901,
when they were part of a large retrospective
of the artist’s works held in Paris.
The Met’s exuberant plein-air study of the cypresses,
holding forth over a sun-scorched wheat field,
is seen also for the first time since 1901
with the artist’s studio rendition of the motif and in
tandem with the drawing
that intervened between the two.
The comparison highlights Van Gogh’s efforts
to distill and refine his on-the-spot impression
into a more vivid, stylized, and decorative conception.
In this definitive version made in the quiet of his studio,
the paint is more thinly and evenly applied
and the colors are brighter.
The now-greener cypresses hold forth
above a yellower, fully ripened field of wheat.
Van Gogh gave palpable form to the hulking majesty
and strapping vitality of the cypresses
viewed against the Alpilles Mountains at twilight.
Working quickly and with gusto, he confronted them head-on,
intent on teasing out the difficult shade of bottle green
with a broad range of hues
in thick, sweeping passages of impasto,
while tweaking the shape of the crescent moon
at least three times until it fell into place.
The work leaves no doubt as to his intense study
of the motif in plein-air,
from the scores of pebbles and vegetal matter
embedded in the paint surface
to the multicolored dabs of pigment added later
to represent the small cones studding the cypresses.
Van Gogh’s enthusiasm for the cypresses was at its peak
when he wrote this letter to his brother, Theo.
He confides his determination to tackle the trees
“as I see them,” on par with his signature sunflowers,
and announces two studies of cypresses,
illustrating the one he felt would be best
with a thumbnail sketch
and promising to send drawings of both
displayed on this wall.
Van Gogh followed up a week later
with other pen-and-ink renditions,
such as the two wheat fields at far right.
They struck Theo as seemingly done in a fury
and a little too distanced from nature.
After his spirited sendoff of the cypress drawings to Theo
on July 2nd,
Van Gogh did not savor the sense of accomplishment for long.
In mid-July,
the artist suffered a debilitating bout of illness,
which left him unable to resume work until early September
and hesitant to step foot outside
until the end of that month.
He never recouped the confidence
tucked into the large sheets of paper from that summer
and he kept his preoccupation with the cypresses to himself.
Van Gogh returned to painting out-of-doors in the fall,
armed with fresh impetus and resolve.
He envisioned that his work would form a kind of ensemble,
impressions of Provence anchored by emblematic motifs.
Setting his sights on giving renewed focus to the cypresses with an eye
to disentangling their true character
and investing them with greater linear verve,
he vowed to soldier on at the asylum,
writing, “It’s difficult to leave a land
before having something to prove
that one has felt and loved it.”
When it came to the cypresses,
Van Gogh’s pledge to “do them as I feel them”
proved easier said than done.
Despite the ambition he confided to works made that October
and voiced in the litany of later letters,
his great desire to tackle the motif anew was variously
diffused, derailed, and by his own admission,
“daunted by the powerful emotions
that take hold of me in the face of nature.”
The cypresses failed to gain traction in plein-air
while continuing to preoccupy and even haunt his thoughts.
There’s no more compelling proof
of Van Gogh’s abiding, if unspoken, preoccupation
with the cypresses as summer gave way to fall
than this view of his studio interior.
Two images of the motif hold pride of place
on the wall to the right of his arched window
overlooking the hospital’s grounds.
The upper one, Trees in the Asylum Garden,
on view at right, marked his most enterprising study
of the trees in plein-air, notwithstanding the ambition
hosted by the larger image below,
in which a dynamic flame-like cypress
occupies the same corner of the composition
as The Starry Night
and finds a counterpart in the flamboyant poplars
he set forth that same week, displayed on the adjacent wall.
Van Gogh brought his work in Provence to a close
and full circle with this pivotal summary picture.
It marks what he called his last try
at bringing his long-standing artistic vision to bear
on a cypress with a star,
this time to his satisfaction in a triumphal endnote.
The “very tall,” “very straight,” and “very dark” cypresses,
as he described them, paired with a crescent moon,
preside over a nocturnal scene
that draws upon such familiar elements as the haloed stars
and thatched roof cottages of The Starry Night,
evokes a bristling wheat field with yellow canes
in the middle ground,
and confides the aspirations of an artist
who still entertained the hope
of working side by side with Gauguin
and continuing the journey they had ventured together
in lockstep like the wayfarers on the winding road.
Van Gogh proudly shared this inventive studio composition with Gauguin,
writing a month later from Auvers.
It would be the last stop on his itinerary.
As an obituary reported,
the Dutch artist’s coffin disappeared
under branches of cypress trees
and bouquets of large sunflowers on July 30th, 1890.
Recognizing the singularity of this enterprise,
which is unlikely to be revisited
for at least a generation or more,
every effort was made to do justice to the theme,
from shaping the original exhibition concept
to securing loans, thanks to the guiding intelligence
and sheer dedication of organizing curator Susan Stein.
We are deeply grateful to her for her efforts,
as we are to the many Met colleagues
who lent their talents and expertise
to realize this major undertaking.
Conceived around destination pictures
and light-sensitive works that are rarely if ever lent
or indeed exhibited together,
the success and integrity of this focused survey
has above all depended on the exceptional generosity
of nearly 30 lenders.
I’d like to particularly thank our Dutch colleagues,
most notably the Van Gogh Museum
and the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation,
and the Museum of Modern Art in New York
for their significant contributions.
This undertaking could not have been realized
without the invaluable support of our generous sponsors.
The exhibition is made possible
by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation,
which lent its assistance early and enthusiastically.
For their own significant gifts,
I thank the Janice H. Levin Fund, Katharine Rayner,
the Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed Fund,
and Allston Chapman.
Gregory Annenberg Weingarten through GRoW @ Annenberg
make possible the accompanying educational programs.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity
from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
I gratefully acknowledge the Janice H. Levin Fund
as well as Adrian Sassoon and Edmund Burke
for their dedicated support of the exhibition catalog.
On behalf of everyone at The Met, thank you for joining us.