METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART VISUAL ANALYSIS

CYPRESSES, 1889
VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853–1890)

While visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the art pieces that drew my attention at first glance was Vincent van Gogh’s Cypresses. Painted in 1889, Cypresses was one of the first pieces created during van Gogh’s year-long stay at Saint-Paul de Mausole Psychiatric Institution in Saint-Rémy, France. While at Saint-Rémy, van Gogh found himself enamored by the view the commune offered, especially with the wheatfields and cypresses there—the latter of which had been his long-time fascination. To put this intrigue into a physical form, van Gogh spent much of his time at the asylum and the rest of his life painting over a dozen pieces including wheatfields and cypresses.

Cypresses, as its title suggests, elegantly depicts two towering cypress trees against the backdrop of a seemingly moving cloudy sky. This landscape genre painting was drawn on a vertical rectangular canvas and, despite its grand subject,

vertical rectangular canvas and, despite its grand subject, only stands at 36.25 inches tall and 29.125 inches wide. To accurately create the illusion of just how big these cypresses are, van Gogh centers a majority of the visual weight onto them, allowing them to take up most of the canvas’ space even if they are not front and center. In fact, to do so, he never entirely closes off the shape of one of the cypresses, making it seem too tall for the canvas to contain.

Not only does van Gogh use the shape of the cypresses to pull the visual weight of the painting onto them, but he also uses color contrast brilliantly to do so. He uses a total of 5–6 shades of green, most of which are darker greens, to build the tree's leaves and shades of brown to form its trunk. This contrasts with the lighter colors of the rest of the painting, which frames the space around the two dark cypresses. The sky, itself, is a mix between blizzard blue and medium turquoise, while the clouds are made up of white, light gray, and pastel pink. The crescent moon, which sits in the top right corner of the painting, is painted using a bright yellow. The mountain behind the trees comprises a pale cerulean blue, light indigo,

and a few strokes of an asparagus green. The wheat bushes along the bottom of the canvas are the only elements of the painting that share similar colors to the cypresses, though they are nowhere near as intense. These bushes compose of golden yellows, olive greens, and kombu greens, along with specks of ivory as the kernels of the wheat stalks. All of these lighter background elements enhance the richness of the cypresses as the main subject in the painting and it causes the audience's eyes to gravitate toward them naturally.

In regard to the spacing and perspective in the painting, van Gogh uses multiple techniques to emphasize depth. He uses overlapping and scale changes to show how certain elements appear to be closer than others. The cypress trees overlapping the mountain in the background indicate that the cypresses are closer to the frame than the mountains are. In turn, the wheat stalks overlap the cypresses, which indicates that those are closer than the trees. In terms of scale changes, the mountain in the background appears much smaller in proportion compared

to the cypress trees. This means that the mountains are further into the painting than the cypresses, as smaller items should seem farther away. van Gogh also uses positioning to show how the elements rooted towards the bottom of the painting are closer than those near the top. The bushes of wheat located along the bottom of the painting should be much closer in perspective than the clouds and the moon in the sky.

Finally, van Gogh also plays with the composition element of atmospheric perspective to make it seem like the parts of the painting with a warmer tone are closer and those with cooler tones are farther. The colors in the bottom half of the painting are much darker and have a warmer tone than in the upper half of the painting, with the exception of the cypresses that extend across it all. While the bottom half of the painting is composed of greens, yellows, and browns, the upper half is made up of cooler colors, like blue, white, and gray. In particular, the mountain with the cool blue color appears to be far away on the canvas, as compared to the darker cypress tree. In addition to colors, the amount of detail put into elements closer in the painting also differ from those far away. The wheat stalks and the cypress trees are drawn in great detail with every stroke representing a different stalk or branch. On the other hand, the mountain in the background is painted with much less focus and almost appears to be blurry.

Beyond the actual image portrayed in the painting, I believe that the brushstrokes are what the audience unconsciously takes in upon looking at it—it is the first thing they see in the painting. The way that van Gogh utilizes his brush to form these swirls and strokes with thick oil paint on the linen canvas is his signature style of painting, so people can immediately recognize his painting once they notice this technique. This also gives the painting a glossy texture through the layering of multiple strokes and it also creates the illusion that different colors are being blended together. For instance, the way the different greens in the cypresses are layered on top of each other makes the trees seem much richer in color and it effectively ties the strokes together as one unique image. In addition to that example, from afar, you can't really tell that pastel pink is painted into the clouds among the white strokes. Instead, the pink seems to be a grayish tint mixed with the white. This color blending with the clouds also seems to be pointing to where the light source of the painting is coming from, which is the top right corner where the moon is. The clouds closer to the moon appear to be a cleaner white than the bottom of the clouds, which are darker with accents of pink and gray. The swirls of paint also display the way the plants are growing upwards and it accentuates the way the clouds seem to be drifting across the sky from left to right. They also show the direction of the mountain’s elevation from left to right.

Personally, I find it interesting that van Gogh chose the cypress tree as his subject in so many of his paintings, especially given his mental state. In addition to Cypresses, these trees are found in The Starry Night (1889), multiple versions ofWheat Field with Cypresses (1889), and Road with Cypress and Star (1890). The cypress tree itself has often been associated with death, specifically the eternal life after death, and van Gogh was known to have been plagued by multiple psychological illnesses to the point of self-harm. His fascination with these cypresses might have been related to his darkened perspective of life and death. The way he frames this "dark patch," as van Gogh describes cypresses to be, with so much light and nature, might symbolize how painting these natural landscapes from Saint-Rémy comforted him in between his psychotic episodes.

All in all, I found this painting to be a beautiful work of art that is expressive and that has a lot of depth, both artistically and contextually. I would love to look into it further when given the chance, along with other works by Vincent van Gogh.

Citations:

Metmuseum.org, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437980.

Van Gogh Route. “Cypress, Saint-Rémy, France: Van Gogh Route.” Cypress, Saint-Rémy, France | Van Gogh Route, https://www.vangoghroute.com/france/saint-remy-de-provence/cypress/.

Van Gogh Route. “Vincent Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy, France: Van Gogh Route.” Vincent Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy, France | Van Gogh Route, https://www.vangoghroute.com/france/saint-remy-de-provence/.