Evening: The End of the Day (after Millet)

Van Gogh made this in the winter of 1889 inside the asylum at Saint-Remy, where he had committed himself after the breakdown in Arles. Cut off from models and often too unwell to work outdoors, he set up prints after Jean-Francois Millet, the painter of peasant labour he revered, and worked from them. He did not call these copies. He called them translations, comparing himself to a musician playing another man's score: Millet gave the composition in black and white, and Van Gogh improvised the colour. This is one of about 21 he made that way. The subject is Millet's, a worker at the close of the day, and the heavy weave of blues and yellows and the restless stroke are entirely his own.