Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter known for his expressive landscapes and energetic brushwork. Influenced by earlier French painters such as Charles-François Daubigny and Jean-François Millet, he saw landscape painting as a means to communicate human feeling and experience.

On 20 May 1890 van Gogh moved to the small country town of Auvers on the Oise River, near Paris. It was here he spent the last two months of his life, during this time his health was declining, prior to his death on 29 July 1890.

During this short time van Gogh’s output was incredibly productive. He painted a seventy-four works, some of them unfinished but many of them of the wheat fields and the busy work of the summer harvest. In letters to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote about how much he loved the beautiful countryside and the rural way of life in Auvers.

Van Gogh worked primarily in oil paint on canvas, applying pigment thickly to create rich surface texture. His palette often features vivid yellows, blues, and greens to capture summer light and atmosphere.

In Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers, van Gogh painted en plein air, placing himself right at the edge of the wheatfield almost as if he is standing inside it. He leads our eye toward the reaper, who sits close to the centre of the painting. By including this figure, van Gogh shows his respect for the hard work, dignity, and importance of people who work on the land.

Van Gogh challenged the traditional rules of painting in the late 1800s. Instead of painting landscapes realistically and smoothly, he:

  • Used bold, expressive colours instead of natural colours
  • Painted visible, energetic brushstrokes
  • Focused on emotion and movement rather than perfect realism
  • Drew and painted ordinary rural scenes and workers as important subjects
  • Used line and texture expressively in his drawing
  • Painted outside (en plein air)

Explore & Respond

  • ideas, practices, works and contexts for the arts in the lives of individuals and groups across cultures, times, places and communities 
  • the diversity of how, where and why people create, make, perform, present and respond across arts forms, and the roles that the arts play in lives, cultures and communities 
  • ways in which the arts communicate cultural and aesthetic knowledge, purpose, meaning and emotion  
  • ways in which the arts develop empathy and understanding of multiple perspectives, across personal, local, regional, national and global contexts. 

Developing practices and skills

  • creative skills for using and manipulating the elements, principles, conventions and/or processes of arts forms 
  • using available materials and technologies to develop and communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning 
  • critical skills in observing, reflecting, analysing, evaluating and/or documenting their own and others’ arts-making practices, using language and/or embodied practices. 

Creating and Making

  • individual and/or collaborative work using available resources/materials in diverse existing, emerging and innovative forms, styles and/or genres  
  • new work, which may be refined and realised, or may be presented as a work in progress  
  • interpretations of work created by others and interpretations of their own work as performers; interpreting involves informed observation, analysis, reflection and evaluation. 

Presenting and Performing

  • share their work using available spaces, materials, technologies and/or digital tools   
  • plan, select, design and rehearse their presentations and performances  

Composition

Composition is the placement or arrangement of objects or subject matter in a work of art, for example, figures, buildings, trees etc.

Composition can also relate to how an artist has organised visual elements and principles such as line, shape, colour, texture, pattern, rhythm etc. in a work of art.

  • What mood does Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers create?
  • Which colours, lines and textures contribute to this feeling?
  • How might the reaper feel working in this landscape?
  • Why do you think Van Gogh chose to paint an ordinary worker as an important subject?

Ordinary People, Important Stories

Van Gogh often painted everyday workers and rural life. Choose a person whose work contributes to their community.

  • Interview or imagine a day in their life.
  • Create a short written or spoken reflection about why this person's role matters.

A Place That Matters to Me

Rather than painting a wheat field, create a work of art about a place they know well. Use colour to communicate mood and include visible marks and textures. Focus on how the place feels rather than what it looks like.

Movement Mapping

Observe movement in nature (wind, rain, trees, clouds, water). Create a drawing using only lines and marks to represent that movement. Avoid realistic depiction and focus on energy and rhythm.

Sound to Mark-Making

Listen to different sounds (storm, traffic, birdsong, ocean). Create marks, colours and textures that respond to the sounds. Which marks best communicate the feeling of the sound?

Community Heroes

Create a portrait or scene celebrating an everyday person in their community (gardener, cleaner, volunteer, crossing monitor, family member).

Focus on telling the story of that person who you have a personal connection to.

Activity in Focus
Collaborative Painting

Introduce students to the artist. You may like to do this by spending time in small groups discussing a selection of his works of art with the following guiding questions:

  • What marks can you see?
  • Which directions do the marks move?
  • What makes his brushstrokes unique?
  • How did he use colour differently?
  • What emotions do his paintings communicate?
  • How do the colours create a mood?

Project Overview

Students work collaboratively to explore Vincent van Gogh's use of colour, texture and expressive mark-making through a large-scale abstract interpretation of one of his paintings. The work of art is divided into 20–30 sections, with each student closely observing and enlarging a small section of the image. Rather than aiming to copy the whole picture realistically, students focus on the colours, lines, shapes, patterns and brushstroke qualities they can see within their section. As individual sections are brought together, the collaborative artwork reveals the original composition from a distance while celebrating the abstract qualities, energy and movement of Van Gogh's painting up close. This project encourages close observation, experimentation with materials, and an understanding of how artists use visual elements to communicate feeling and atmosphere.

Outcomes

  • Collaboration and teamwork
  • Artist research
  • Colour theory
  • Expressive mark making
  • Observation and composition
  • Reflection and responding

Materials required

Painting Option

  • Acrylic
  • Brushes of varying sizes
  • Palettes
  • A3 cartridge paper or canvas board

Oil Pastel Option

  • Oil pastels
  • Cartridge paper
  • Blending tools/tissues

Practical Component

Each student will be given a section of the painting to observe and recreate in oil pastel or paint. This activity is great to do with any work of art by Vincent van Gogh.

Tips

  • Observe carefully
  • Practise with colour mixing and blending
  • Provide students with a copy of either their section or the entire image and use a view finder to isolate the area students will be painting.
  • Keep marks expressive
  • Fill the page completely
  • Work slowly and carefully

The best bit – put them all back together to see the whole image.