June 1888

Perennially drawn to the laborers and the fields, Vincent applies his expressive drawing style in sketching views of the plain near Arles. As painting in a spontaneous manner becomes more and more important for him, he gradually loses interest in what he learned during his second year in Paris and rejects Neo-Impressionism to concentrate again on canvases where paint is applied in a thick impasto.

He adds flat tints of watercolor to his pen-and-ink drawings of fields, “like Japanese prints.” He translates the patchwork of the plains into hatches and dots created with reed pens and quills. In oil paintings executed at this time, he wields his heavily laden brush like a pen to create a highly textured and variegated impasto. He works on what he calls a “bold” size, no. 30, canvas, measuring 28 3/4 x 36 5/8 inches.

– Alisia Robin Coon, Van Gogh Timeline, in Becoming van Gogh, Denver Art Museum, 2012, 260