Vincent van Gogh - First Steps after Millet 1890

A Road at Saint-Remy with Female Figure 1889 Valley with Ploughman Seen from Above 1889 Wooden Sheds 1889 First Steps after Millet 1890 Morning Peasant Couple Going to Work 1890 Noon Rest from Work after Millet 1890 The Plough and the Harrow after Millet 1890
First Steps after Millet 1890

First Steps after Millet 1890
72x91cm oil/canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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From The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
In fall and winter 1889–90, while a voluntary patient at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted twenty-one copies after Millet, an artist he greatly admired. He considered his copies "translations" akin to a musician's interpretation of a composer's work. He let the black-and-white images—whether prints, reproductions, or, as here, a photograph that his brother, Theo, had sent—pose "as a subject," then he would "improvise color on it." For this work of January 1890, Van Gogh squared-up a photograph of Millet's First Steps and transferred it to the canvas.