The Sower: Outskirts of Arles in the Background

In the summer of 1888 Van Gogh had moved south to Arles, hoping the strong light of Provence would steady both his painting and his health. He kept returning to a subject that had followed him since his early years copying Jean-Francois Millet: a man scattering seed across a field. Millet's sower was dark and grey. Van Gogh wanted a modern one, built from radiant colour and sharp contrast. Here the figure strides over the furrows under a low sun, the rooftops of Arles low on the far horizon. He worked the motif over and over that year, telling his brother Theo in letters how hard the figure was to get right. That town on the skyline is Arles itself, where he was renting the Yellow House and hoping to gather other painters into a studio of the south.