Vincent van Gogh, Landscape With Couple Walking and Crescent Moon

Van Gogh painted ‘A Wheatfield with Cypresses’ while staying at the hospital  Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy in Provence.

Click to view the actual Google map

Large copies of twenty-one of van Gogh’s paintings painted in Saint-Rémy can be admired as a part of the Promenade dans l’univers de Vincent van Gogh while taking a walk around the hospital and in the surrounding landscape.

This pigment analysis is based on the work of the scientists at the State University of Londrina in Brazil (1). The scientists employed the method of X-ray fluorescence to prepare maps of individual pigments throughout the whole painting.

1 The green lawn: emerald green and zinc white
2 Green trees: emerald green, viridian, and Prussian blue

3 Blue clothes of the man: Prussian blue and cobalt blue
4 Yellow clothes of the woman: chrome yellow and probably lemon yellow. Prussian blue for the outlines and details.

5 Turquoise parts of the sky: viridian and cobalt blue
6 Orange parts of the sky: chrome orange

7 Blue mountains: Prussian blue, cobalt blue, and some emerald green
8 Crescent moon: chrome yellow

References

(1) Rafael Molari, Carlos Roberto Appoloni, Pigment analysis in four paintings by Vincent van Gogh by portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), Radiation Physics and Chemistry 181 (2021) 109336

(1) Sjraar van Heugten, Joachim Pissarro and Chris Stolwijk, Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night, Brussels, 2008, fig. 103

(2) Jirat-Wasiutyński, V. Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings of Olive Trees and Cypresses from St.-Rémy. The Art Bulletin, 75(4), 1993, 647–670.