Critiquing "The Mulberry Tree"

Vincent Van Gogh is famous for using bold colors in his artworks.  In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles, Provence where the beautiful landscapes inspired him to capture its beauty in his paintings.  In capturing these landscapes, Van Gogh exaggerated the colors and used bold expressive lines, which contributed to the modern art era. 

His work, The Mulberry Tree is one of the many paintings he did in Arles, Provence.  The intention of this piece was to emphasize the bright color and bold strokes of the landscape, in contribution to the modern art paintings.  The Mulberry Tree clearly achieved Van Gogh’s intention—its bright yellow emphasizes the tree’s extravagant beauty and the bold strokes details the landscape.  In addition, Van Gogh’s bold stroke of lines, which follows the contours of the objects in the painting, creates this sense of movement in the picture, especially the tree.  The wild curvilinear strokes on the tree indicate that nature is not in a perfectly static state; instead, nature is wild and ever changing.  

When I first saw this work, it captured my attention from all of Van Gogh’s other works because of the use of colors and lines.  Van Gogh’s intention of bringing out the bright yellow really captured my attention to this painting—the yellow stands out to the eye, and it stays in my memory.  The lines also add the affect of being wild and crazy as they are not straight static lines, which would represent stability, but rather bold curvilinear and organic lines.  Nature in general is wild; it’s out in the wild land and is in a sense, untamable.  The overall composition is of organic lines and shapes, which says a lot about nature because, organic shapes represent “natural objects” which are not man-made or structured for a specific purpose.  

The picture overall is balanced.  By centering the tree on the page, and emphasizing it using a bright yellow, Van Gogh draws the audience‘s attention to the tree’s importance.  The wild bold strokes on the tree move the audience’s attention towards the light yellow field in the background then the blue sky.  The bold lines creates rhythm in the painting too since they are repeated throughout the painting.  Van Gogh uses the rule of third to compose the picture.  Even though the tree’s trunk is centered right in the middle, its branches and leaves are not; instead, they are a wildly spread throughout a little bit more than 2/3 of the painting.  

The Mulberry Tree is one piece that artists can evaluate and critique.  It's a great piece to look at and view Van Gogh's work.