Vincent Van Gogh: Peach Tree in Blossom

It's likely a surprise to no one that I approach Art much as I approach Literature. Books and paintings can be merely appreciated: viewed or read, judged as pleasing or not, and then set aside.  But Art and Literature offer a deeper pleasure: that of being understood.  Works that deserve to be included in these capitalized categories are very much like stacks of old transparencies, such as one used to find in the middle of encyclopedias, each system of the human body printed on a separate plate, and then bound together as a unit.  One could certainly look at the stack and see the marvelous, complicated unity of the system, but what sort of barbarian would stop there?  Who could resist lifting away the topmost plate and seeing what lie underneath?

The trick is to find the loose corners, the passages that don't seem to fit with the rest of the work, the words that an author uses more or differently than she or he might have, Coleridge's eyes, Eliot's Iphigenia, and in this case, Van Gogh's shadows.  I wrote years ago about Van Gogh's curious affinity for Bunyan, and how that author was a loose edge that allowed one to lift a layer of the artist's work and see a bit of what was underneath.  The gist is that Van Gogh seemed to see himself in Christian, the eponymous pilgrim, and many of his paintings can be seen as an allegorical journey.  I was quite pleased with this analysis at the time, but had merely lifted up the first layer.

As I walked through the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I was not even looking for a new analysis.  I didn't expect to find any dogeared corners, any loose edges begging to be lifted up, but I found one, and it is this painting.  I walked past the rows of haystacks, the sunflowers, the Dutch working class who were turning into the potatoes they ate, but was stopped in my tracks when I came to "Peach Tree in Blossom".  Something was not right about it.  It didn't make sense, and I stared at it for some minutes trying to put my eye on exactly what was different about it.  Wasn't it just like all the others?  But no, it was all wrong.  The shadows were all wrong.  

Where is the light source in this picture?  It seems to be a low sun off canvas to the left.  The tree in the back is casting a long shadow on the fence, and the palette is that of near sunset.  But the tree in the front.  Its shadow is cast directly underneath.  Was this a mistake?  Where is this other light source?  And why does it not catch the tree in the background?  And the tree itself is uniformly lit.  Seemingly from the front.

An impressionist would never have done this.  Monet et al were fastidiously faithful to the light they saw.  But Van Gogh was creating an expression, not an impression.  This was not the light he saw; it's manifestly impossible for the shadows to have been cast in this way.  And it is not as though he was incapable of or averse to capturing realistic shade. 

Note how faithful to the single light source he is in this self portrait.  In fact, all of his self portraits have this quality, and nearly all are from this angle (it is worth noting that self portraits as an artist, by title or with an easel are nearly all from the opposite angle).  Having lifted up this corner, one begins to notice other inconsistencies.

What is the difference between these two sunflower still lifes?

The former, by Monet, has a clear light source and casts a shadow.  The latter is manifestly impossible.   There is light in the picture, as seen from the reflection on the vase, but it has two strange features:  it is cast from directly in front of the painting, and its shadows do not follow the laws of nature.  This was not a light he saw; it was a light that lived only in the mind of the painter.  

Once attuned to this inconsistency, one sees it everywhere.  I noticed it again at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin in "Le Moulin de la Galette":

The shadows here are all over the place.  In fact, there is only one possible source for the light in this painting, and again it is directly in front of the canvas. The figures on the left are casting a shadow to the right.  Those on the right are the opposite.  And the figure in the rough center is casting a shadow directly underneath or behind.  The light is coming from behind the artist, and by extension, the viewer.

Or is it?  Such a mental placement works for "Le Moulin", but it can't account for "Sunflowers" or "Peach Tree".  There is no literal light source that would behave that way.  The light in these paintings cannot be literal.  And what about when Van Gogh tries to capture an actual light?  Say, a candle?

This candle casts no shadow!  Such a thing is possible because this is not a painting of a candle.  It is an allegorical portrait of Gaugin.  An artist.  A light without a shadow.  The light in Van Gogh's paintings is not coming from behind him.  It is him.  No wonder that the only realistic shadows he painted were on his own face.  And when you look at a Van Gogh, you necessarily adopt his perspective.  You see what he saw, and you know what he knew:  that the light is not coming from behind you; it is you. You are the light in Van Gogh's paintings.  You are the traveler.  You are the pilgrim.  You are the candle, as much as he was, and the shadows you cast are bizarre, irregular, and unreal.