Explore the Significance about the Interpretations of this artwork.
Just three days separate Landscape at Auvers in the Rain from van Gogh's alleged suicide. Despite van Gogh's agony, depression, and hopelessness, his painting has sometimes been interpreted as containing signs of hope and renewal, closely connected to the invigoration of spirit van Gogh felt when spending time outdoors. Landscape at Auvers in the Rain expresses the relationship between nature and emotion that is van Gogh's signature form of expression, as he "imbued his landscapes with personal feelings ... in his landscape paintings he wanted to express the emotions that nature evoked in him". The artist distorted reality to enhance the expression of his emotions in the work. The image's lack of distinct subject matter and identifying signs of Auvers relate to van Gogh's goal of creating a relationship between nature and emotion. One critic notes that van Gogh's true innovation with Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is his ability to create an expansive image that transforms a landscape into a metaphor, noting that even singular forms in the painting, such as the crows, "lift from the fields and are lost in the vegetation beyond the motifs and subject matter, and as in other paintings of the same format, the painting itself becomes the subject matter ... the motif is literally drowned in painting". Through these stylistic choices, van Gogh urges the viewer to share in the intensity of his emotion and enter his own distorted expression of reality. Van Gogh's efforts to create a new type of landscape are reflected in his own words; in a letter to Theo at the end of his life he stated that he could "see from afar the possibility of a new painting", noting that "before such nature I feel powerless".The rainy storm is central to the emotional expression that Landscape at Auvers in the Rain aims to convey. The layered, horizontal bands reflecting the countryside are interrupted by the rain, which lashes down in great streaks across the canvas, creating a dramatic emotional impact. While these features are abstracted and stylised rather than naturalistic, they still maintain the sense of emotion the artist wished to convey, notably the cycle of human pain and suffering. Van Gogh himself associated the inevitable natural phenomena of rainstorms with the parallel inevitability of anguish throughout the human lifespan. However, the painting is not simply an expression of hopelessness and despair. Van Gogh wrote to Theo that nature was a refuge from his troubles, and specifically, "when suffering is sometimes so great it fills the whole horizon that it takes on the proportions of a hopeless deluge ... it is better to look at a wheat field, even in the form of a picture." To certain critics, his use of the bright yellows to signify the wheat-filled countryside was a symbol of comfort for van Gogh in his distress because "it embodied the ongoing process of life, the irrelevance of the individual's fate in the overall beauty and harmony of the divine order".
alleged suicide