Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) has long been known as a tortured genius, a painter who, despite his early death, left a tremendous legacy of paintings, more than two thousand paintings belonging to what is known as Impressionism, many of which were natural scenes of fields, flowers, night and day.

What made Van Gogh focus on nature so much in his paintings?

Van Gogh said, "If you really love nature, you will find beauty wherever you are." In an article on how to maintain psychological stability, published by the Harvard Medical School to illustrate the effective ability of nature in treating mental disorders and maintaining mental health, he reads: "The researchers note that those who have recently suffered from stressful life events, such as a serious illness or the death of a loved one, have improved their state of mind in the bosom of nature. Nature can have a powerful effect on our mental state, and there are many ways to benefit from them."

In the case of Van Gogh, we find that he painted more than a thousand paintings on nature and its elements, and that in many of the correspondence between him and his brother Theo, he described nature as a source of inspiration, "If I do not feel love towards nature and my work, then I will be unhappy." In his speeches, nature and art are closely linked, and that he finds inspiration and serenity only in the bosom of nature.

Looking at his paintings dealing with flowers, we find that he adopted the use of contrasting and strong colors in his paintings on the still life, where he combined green, red, blue and orange in many of the paintings of vases, and those are the colors on which the color theory of the painter Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) was based. He was an example to follow for Van Gogh.

Almond blossoms

One of Van Gogh's favorite subjects was the branches of large flowers, such as almonds, facing the sky.

In France, almond trees bloom early in the spring, making them a symbol of a new life, according to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and he made 4 paintings of almond tree branches as they opened, and he gave the chain to his brother, who had a new baby named Vincent after his uncle.

The almond blooms appeared again in “A Sprig of Blossoming Almonds in a Cup” (March 1888), a still life painting of a red line dividing the plane of the image, and a branch of almond blossoms in a transparent glass.

According to the Van Gogh Museum, he was tempted to draw almonds blooming after the white winter months, as he put it, as the snow falls heavily in the French city of Arles.

Almond Blossoms is a painting of still life by Van Gogh (Island)

Today, Van Gogh's paintings dealing with flowers and landscapes are at the center of all his works, and the influence of these works has already appeared on the first generation of plastic artists in France after his death, where impressionism received all attention, and in its context Van Gogh's hope that his work would continue In the inspiration of many after his death.