Tree Roots

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Tree Roots

Artist Vincent van Gogh

Year 1890

 F816
Catalogue
 JH2113

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions 50.0 cm × 100.0 cm (19.7 in × 40.6 in)

Location Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Tree Roots is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in July 1890 when he lived
in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.[1][2] The painting is an example of the double-square canvases that he
employed in his last landscapes.[3]

Contents

 1Background
 2Works
 3Letters
 4References
 5Bibliography
 6External links
Background[edit]
Van Gogh spent the last few months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town just north of Paris,
after he left an asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1890.[4] The painting is considered by some to be his
last painting before his death late July 1890.[Works 1]
Jan Hulsker considers it the most original of his double-square canvases. The viewer thinks he can
identify tree roots and trunks, but is hard put to identify the subject as a whole.[5] Van der Veen and
Knapp comment that in this painting, as also in Undergrowth with Two Figures, the painting itself and
not the subject is pre-eminent, heralding abstract painting and German expressionism.[6]
As far back as 1882, while at The Hague, van Gogh had made a study of tree roots, Study of a
Tree (below), which he had completed at the same time as a larger version (now lost) of Sorrow. In a
letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh said that he wanted to express something of life's struggle in
these drawings.[Letters 1] It is not known whether he had returned to the same thoughts with his
1890 Tree Roots. The letters give no hint and the colours are perhaps too bright for such sombre
thoughts.[Works 1]

Undergrowth with Two Figures, oil on canvas 50 x 100, late June 1890 (F773, JH2041).[Works 2][Letters 2][Letters 3]

Tree roots in a sandy ground ('Les racines'), pencil, black chalk, brush in ink, brown and grey wash,
opaque watercolour on watercolour paper, April–May 1882,Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (F933,
JH142).[Works 3][Works 4][Letters 1]