The Van Gogh Museum

Out of the wonderful collection at the Van Gogh Museum, which has grown brilliantly over the years, I selected these two to post because I think of them often. I look to the first painting's rain as it overlaps the sky, the intensity of the gesture that makes the rain and its resulting surface texture is a monumental development in his painting. I look to the sunflowers because it's wonderful of course, but in the upper right and left, two years later, he shifts and the paint becomes the texture.

Van Gogh, Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige), 1887, courtesy of Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889, courtesy of Van Gogh Museum