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Vincent van Gogh, 'Long Grass with Butterflies', 1890
About the work
Overview
Van Gogh painted this patch of meadow when he was a patient at the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Paul de Mausole, near the village of St-Rémy in the south of France. While at the hospital he made a number of sketches and paintings that look down at small areas of meadow or undergrowth.
Although there is no horizon or sky, the path near the top of the picture creates an effect of depth. In contrast to the boundary formed by the path, the remaining space is open and potentially extends beyond the sides and bottom of the canvas. The grass is painted with distinct brushstrokes of varying length, laid down in clusters like the clumps they describe.
Van Gogh’s interest in depicting nature in detail may have been encouraged by what he had read about Japanese culture, and his belief that ‘the wise Japanese man...studies a single blade of grass’. But there were also important precedents in Renaissance art and in seventeenth-century Dutch painting.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- Long Grass with Butterflies
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh
- Artist dates
- 1853 - 1890
- Date made
- 1890
- Medium and support
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 64.5 × 80.7 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1926
- Inventory number
- NG4169
- Location
- Room 43
- Collection
- Main Collection
- Frame
- 19th-century French Frame
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
Images
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Van Gogh painted several versions of A Wheatfield, with Cypresses during the summer of 1889, while he was a patient in the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Paul de Mausole, in the village of St-Rémy in the south of France. A first version, which he described as a study, was painted on site in late J...
In late 1883 Van Gogh moved to the town of Nuenen in North Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands. His arrival there marked the beginning of a highly productive period that was to culminate in his first major painting, The Potato Eaters of 1885 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).This picture belongs...
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Van Gogh painted this view from his window at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, following a severe epileptic attack which had prevented him from painting. Typical of his work at this date, the scene is based on direct observation but is laden with personal meaning. The hardworking ploughman, tilling the...
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