The Sower

Van Gogh painted The Sower in June 1888, during his first summer in Arles. He had moved south from Paris in February, looking for stronger light and cheaper living. By June he was painting in the fields outside the town. A farmer walks across a freshly plowed field, sowing seed from a bag slung over his shoulder. He is silhouetted against a large yellow sun that fills the upper left of the canvas. A tree trunk cuts diagonally across the foreground, its leaves dark against the sky. The field is painted in thick strokes of blue and violet, the sky in bands of yellow and green. The canvas is roughly 25 by 32 inches, landscape format. The colors are intense and unnatural, chosen for their emotional force rather than their accuracy. Van Gogh was reading the Bible and thinking about the parable of the sower when he painted this. He had also been studying Japanese prints, with their flat colors and bold compositions. He wrote to his brother Theo that the painting was a failure, but it is now one of his most recognized works from the Arles period. Van Gogh painted at least two versions of the sower in 1888. This version is in the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo. He based the composition on an earlier painting by Jean-Francois Millet, but he replaced Millet's grey palette with the saturated yellows and blues of the south. Oil on canvas, 64 by 80.5 centimeters. Van Gogh painted in thick impasto, building the field in ridges of paint. The sower's body is a dark silhouette, with no facial detail. The tree is painted in swift, calligraphic strokes. The sun is a flat disk of yellow, not a naturalistic light source. This painting works in a living room, dining room, or office. The intense yellows and blues pair with white walls, natural wood, or blue accents. The 18x24 framed version in a white frame complements the bright palette. The 16x20 works in a smaller space. The painting is in the Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. This is a public domain artwork, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.