Product Description

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most popularly admired and critically acclaimed artists of all time -- exhibitions of his work draw record crowds and his paintings fetch astronomical prices. Of his hundreds of canvases, landscapes and paintings of gardens and flowers remain the most beloved. From the sweeping wheat fields and gnarled olive branches of Provence to extravagant bouquets and fantastic details of irises and sunflowers, van Gogh captured the breathtaking beauty, expansive color spectrum, and complexity of nature at its most compelling.

Using van Gogh's eloquent personal letters and dazzling paintings as his foundation, writer and master photographer Derek Fell brings van Gogh's theories and visions of the garden to life in this lavishly illustrated volume. Fell's own expert photography not only captures the countryside, farmland, cottage gardens, and village parks that van Gogh so passionately loved but also brings to life the horticultural world that the artist dreamed of creating. Complemented by a superb selection of his greatest paintings, Van Gogh's Gardens is a marvelous celebration of nature's brilliance and one man's genius.

Searching out fragments of van Gogh's world still in existence -- the sunflower fields he tramped through, the courtyard garden of the hospital where he sought treatment -- Fell shows us that the colors and textures of the Impressionists' Provence remain with us today. He also delves deeply into the letters van Gogh wrote and gives us a wonderful discussion of the artist's color theories: Mix geraniums and poppies to create a stunning combination of red, pink, and green, he advised his sister in Holland, or interplant sweet heliotrope and roses to generate a dramatic color harmony between orange and violet.

Fell extrapolates on van Gogh's vision of gardens and plants by going one step further -- and the result is a revelation. Rigorously following the advice offered in van Gogh's letters and duplicating the garden motifs he depicted in his paintings, this exceptional gardener has brought the great artist's ideas to vibrant life on his Pennsylvania farm. Van Gogh died in abject poverty, too poor to plant a garden of his own -- but Fell's plantings and photographs show us in dazzling glory how brilliant van Gogh's reflections on color and nature really were.

In addition to offering special sections on van Gogh's favorite structures, his bouquets, and the theme gardens he painted, Van Gogh's Gardens includes a fully illustrated, alphabetical listing of the painter's favorite plants -- from arum to yucca. Both exquisitely beautiful and eminently useful, this marvelous book offers readers the opportunity to create van Gogh's artistic beauty in their own backyards. With a brilliant mix of paintings, photographs, and text, Van Gogh's Gardens allows us to see this master artist's paintings and theories as inspiration for the most beautiful gardens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #738572 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

About the Author
Derek Fell, a photographer and writer, is the author of more than 50 books, with more than 2.5 million copies in print, including The Impressionist Garden, Renoir's Garden, Secrets of Monet's Garden, and Impressionist Bouquets. He is the winner of more awards from the Garden Writers Association of America than any other writer, and for six years he hosted the QVC garden show Step-by-Step Gardening. He was born and educated in England and now lives in Pennsylvania.

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Preface

"I am very busy gardening and have sown a little garden full of poppies, sweet peas, and mignonette. Now we must wait and see what becomes of it."

Letter to Theo, from his London lodgings

(April 1874)

Of all the paintings made by Vincent van Gogh over a career that spanned only ten years, his images of flowers and gardens project his extraordinary energy and unique interpretations of nature. The sunflower series, the irises, the cutting gardens of Provence, his series of floral bouquets while living in Paris, all are images that remain indelible in our minds among his tremendous outpouring of work.

As I researched van Gogh's garden philosophy through his letters and paintings, one passage stood out as an example of the childlike delight he took in exploring gardens. To his brother Theo, he condided his joy: "I have come back from a day at Montmajour....We explored the old garden together and stole some excellent figs. If it had been bigger it would have made me think of Zola's Paradou -- green reeds, vines, ivy, fig trees, olives, pomegranates with lusty flowers of the brightest orange, hundred-year-old cypresses, ash trees and willows, rock oaks, halfbroken flights of steps, ogive windows in ruins, blocks of white rocks covered in lichen, and scattered fragments of crumbling walls here and there among the green."

When van Gogh closed the final chapter of his life, he left not only a legacy of incredible paintings but also hundreds of pages of letters that offer insights into his art, as no other artist has done before or since. His observations of nature, his theories about color harmonies, and his choice of garden motifs allow us to understand clearly what impressed and inspired him about cultivated spaces. On a more practical note, these letters -- often written deliberately to teach and instruct -- can help us become better gardeners. Indeed, knowing what this great artist liked about plants and gardens has helped me create a series of twenty unusual theme gardens at my own home, Cedaridge Farm, in rural Pennsylvania. I am happy to share some of the lessons learned from Vincent van Gogh, and to show how my wife and I have made our property infinitely more beautiful from the experience.

Presented throughout this book are specific planting ideas and garden designs inspired by van Gogh's art -- not only designs based on his favorite color harmonies, many accomplished in small areas, but also complete garden spaces, such as vegetable gardens, cutting gardens, shade gardens, and skyline effects using the trees and shrubs he painted. I've included tips concerning specific plants that van Gogh admired -- for example, how to delay the wilting of sunflowers, which he found frustrating; how to grow lavender to perfection; and how to time the seeding of poppies so they provide a succession of color from early spring through autumn.

I hope that, after seeing the evocative paintings, evaluating the hundred or so specific gardening ideas he expressed a special fondness for, and seeing these ideas interpreted in a modern context, other home gardeners will be inspired to create beautiful, uplifting, spiritual spaces.

Copyright © 2001 by Derek Fell

From Color Harmonies

It is now more than one hundred years since Vincent van Gogh ended his life, and considering the circumstances of his death, his art could easily have died with him. That it did not is all the more remarkable because Theo soon followed his brother to the grave, tormented by a delirium symptomatic of his brother's mental condition. Sadly, Vincent's younger sister Wil also fell victim to mental illness, ending her days in a mental institution. The widowed Johanna, with no means of support in Paris, returned to her native Holland with her child, Vincent, and struggled to establish an income running a boardinghouse.

There has been much speculation about why van Gogh killed himself No doubt the suicide was in large part the act of a man in the grip of mental Illness one disillusioned and disappointed by his failure as an artist. But his motive undoubtedly includes other elements. We know from his letters that he considered himself a financial burden on his brother. Theo's limited resources were stretched further with the birth of his son, whose fragile health demanded significant medical attention. Van Gogh's concern for the child-and his suspicion that Theo's support for his painting career deprived the boy of needed care -- may have preyed on his deeply depressed mind and contributed to his decision to end his life. In any event, his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound was devastating to Theo and his family.

Following the death of Theo, his widow, Johanna, inherited her brother-in-law's vast quantity of sketches, letters, and paintings. In her spare time over the years, she promoted, cataloged, and exhibited his work, and through her tenacity and diligence, they began to earn recognition as great works of art. When she passed away in 1927, her son, Vincent (van Gogh's godson), took up the cause of promoting international acclaim for his uncle's art. Now, long after van Gogh's technique has ceased to be ridiculed, exhibitions of his work -- and payment for his paintings at auction -- continue to set world records.

Amazingly, a large number of the gardens and landscapes that van Gogh depicted survive to the present day, and it is possible to visit the sites: the colorful courtyard garden he painted in the Arles hospital; the Garden of the Poets in Arles; the sinister asylum garden at Saint-Rémy; Dr. Gachet's garden, where he painted the doctor's daughter; Daubigny's garden, with its colorful island beds; the sparkling wildflower meadows, lavender fields, and olive orchards of Provence-, the vast wheat fields of Auvers;; the writhing black Jumpers against the rocky limestone slopes of the Alpilles Mountains; the quaint thatched cottages and gardens of Saintes Maries-de-la-Mer; the sparkling apple, plum, and peach orchards of Montmajour. To see them in real life is crucial in order to understand van Gogh's appreciation of particular landscapes and gardens.

When we analyze van Gogh's art, the dominant appeal is his application of color, particularly its vibrancy and vitality. When we view his work, we can sense the physical world with intensity -- the warmth of the sun, the cold of a snowscape, the chill of a wind-whipped sea, the blustery blasts of the mistral wind, the perfumed gaiety of a sun-drenched cutting garden, the quiet eeriness of a woodland garden, the soft wonder of a night sky. Commenting on a canvas of his olive trees, van Gogh wrote that it would "give the sense of the country and smell of the soil."

The vibrancy of his art comes not only from the tonal values he chose but, more important, from the color combinations he created. Often these arc pairs like orange and violet, even black and white, but often they are triad harmonics like blue, pink, and white or yellow, black, and orange. In a letter to Theo in the summer of 1888, he explained the intensity of his studies of color: "I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a wedding of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."

Discussing his reasons for moving to the South of France, he wrote emphatically to an artist friend: "From Arles onwards you arc bound to find beautiful contrasts of red and green, of blue and orange, of sulphur and lilac." These arc the same color combinations he told Wilhelmien to try in her garden, using flowers to paint the landscape.

Whenever he saw a particularly beautiful color combination in the Provençal landscape, he dashed off a detailed description to Theo. As he explored Arles, he reported: "Everywhere and all over the vault of heaven is a marvelous blue, and the sun sheds a radiance of pure sulphur, and it is soft and as lovely as the combination of heavenly blue and yellows as a van der Meer of Delft. I cannot paint it as beautiful as that, but it absorbs me so much that I let myself go, never thinking of a single rule."

The Color Wheel

Though van Gogh ignored rules, seeking his best color combinations in nature, and especially in the gardens he visited, he was well aware of the scientific basis of color relationships. The first color wheel had been published in 1839, showing the scientific relationship between colors. Before then, the British physicist Sir Isaac Newton had identified the colors of sunlight by shining light through a glass prism. The prism split the sun's rays into the six main colors evident whenever we see a rainbow -- red, yellow, orange, green, blue, and violet.

However, it was not until Michel-Eugène Chevreul, a chemist working for the Gobelins dye works in Paris, published the first chromatic wheel that van Gogh could clearly understand the laws of colors and see how all colors arc linked and derived from the three primaries -- red, yellow, and blue. The other colors of the rainbow -- green, orange, and violet -- are produced by an overlapping or mixing of the primaries -- yellow and red to produce orange; blue and yellow to produce green; and blue and red to produce violet. Chevreul divided his wheel into "hot colors" (those that arc assertive, like orange, red, and yellow) and "cool colors" (those that tend to recede, like blue, green, and purple). He explained that colors opposite each other on the wheel (for example, yellow and violet) make the best contrasts, and that placing two separate colors close to each other or entwined (as in the threads of a fabric) produces the same effect as mixing the colors. Van Gogh was so captivated with Chevreul's concept of entwining that he kept balls of complementary colored wool in a lacquered box.

In his writings Chevreul even suggested ways of applying his laws of colors to the garden, and subsequently two French garden writers -- J. Decaisne and C. Naudin -- elaborated on Chevreul's thesis in their book Manuel ...

Customer Reviews

Learn about Van Gogh as gardener....
This book is a great combination of learning about Van Gogh as an articulate gardener, nature lover, and color connoisseur as well as the artist as we already know him. It is a touching story told in a way that allows us to understand how Van Gogh used all these parts of his life and about the intensity with which he lived. His incredible appetite and curiosity about color combinations, the thought that went behind his choices of plants using color and texture as guide, and how he shared these experiences in letters to family. The pictures are gorgeous and yes, it has had an effect on the garden I am currently working on. How can one not be influenced by such genius. My thoughts on what goes into my garden & color perspective will forever be somewhat different, and made better, for having read this book. This book will give everyone who reads it a different way of looking at all gardens, plants, trees - and their selection of all these for their own garden.

Award Winning Book
This lavish book of lush photographs has won Derek Fell another award - the Garden Globe Award for Best Photographer from the Garden Writers Association of America. Derek was one of only five individuals selected out of a field of more than 300 entries to receive a 2002 Garden Globe Award for work produced during 2001. This award could easily make Derek the winner of more awards from Garden Writers than any other garden communicator. The book was selected by a panel of garden communication experts - some Pulitzer Prize winners themselves -- who look for the best books, magazines, writers and photographers in the country. This book is more than a collection of beautiful photographs. Derek uses the painter's personal interpretations, color theory and painting techniques to inspire you to re-create van Gogh's breathtaking paintings in your own backyard. Derek even includes tips on creating the picture perfect van Gogh garden of your own, complete with a list of van Gogh's favorite plants. To view all the Garden Globe Awards...

For the Artist in the Gardener and the Gardener in the Artist
Derek Fell is a fine photographer and a fine writer about things horticultural. In VAN GOGH'S GARDENS he marries these talents and in doing so has produced a unique book that is bound to fascinate lovers of gardens, Van Gogh devotees, art collectors and museum visitors, and just about everyone who delights in understanding the motivations of artists when viewing their subjects.

Fell selects particular paintings by Van Gogh then shows the point of inspiration by photographing the areas visited by van Gogh in his lifetime. Yes, there are the ubiquitous sunflowers, comparing the flowers to the canvas versions of them. But there are also the trees that are part of van Gogh's legacy rarely mentioned. His twisted trunks and branches of olive trees side by side with Fell's gorgeous photographs of the particular types of olive trees that inspired the painter create an art course for the astute observer. His lilac bushes/trees that mesmerized the artist are shared as are the many plants the artist interpreted.

Balancing fine photography with excellent reproductions of canvases is an art in itself and Derek Fell has created not only a visual splendor but writes with the depth of a horticulturalist's knowledge that makes this beautiful volume all the more seductive. A very fine addition to the literature on van Gogh. Grady Harp, November 06