Focus on Landscape at Auvers in the Rain and analyze the Composition.
Van Gogh's exploration of 50 cm × 100 cm (20 in × 39 in), double-square canvases allowed him to convey the fields surrounding Auvers with a greater sense of boundlessness. In his final letter to Theo he expressed that he was "quite absorbed in the immense plain with wheatfields against the hills" he found in Auvers, a sense of awe he wished to display in his paintings. The artist created twelve landscapes of this size but, curiously, "van Gogh himself said nothing about why he began using these unusual formats", although "the paintings were probably envisioned as a series to be hung and exhibited together". Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is a prime example of how these large canvases afforded him an expanse to represent the immense stretches of wheatfields that engulfed the village. He engages the viewer by illustrating a high horizon line, creating a bird's-eye view, but tilting the foreground so that one feels oneself to be within the grassy hills and looking above them simultaneously. The image has a limitless, panoramic depth due to the artist's "diametrically opposed compositional approach, an exaggerated wide-angle effect from an elevated vantage point, giving a remarkably broad view over the landscape." Van Gogh's use of perspective and cropping became bolder and more innovative as he progressed as an artist, especially noteworthy because Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is one of his final works, showing that he continued to evolve the entirety of his career. Fascinated with this striking perspective, graphic design researchers have used digital analysis on Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, among other works from the artist's Auvers period, determining that "in Auvers, van Gogh moved toward simplifying the composition, trading it for an increase in contrast and chromaticity".
F double-square canvases