Evening - The End of the Day (after Millet) 1889

This painting, Evening - The End of the Day, was made by Vincent van Gogh using oil on canvas. Van Gogh wasn't interested in the smooth illusionism that painters had pursued for centuries. Instead, he built up the surface of his canvases with strokes of thick paint, drawing attention to its materiality. Here, you can see how the artist used the impasto technique to build layers of texture, creating a sense of movement across the field. The application of paint is visible in the thick ridges and swirls, and the brushstrokes are distinctly articulated. This gives the painting a tactile quality, as if the viewer could reach out and feel the texture of the field. But it also speaks to the labor involved in the subject matter. Van Gogh's painting is based on a work by Jean-François Millet, who like Van Gogh, was interested in depicting rural life. In this painting, we can see a farmer returning home after a long day of work, and Van Gogh's emphasis on the materiality of the paint underscores the labor involved in farming. In doing so, it elevated it to something worthy of high art.