u/Equivalent_Cold8096

Pencil and black chalk on paper, 51 x 35,5 cm

I had always figured that this painting was inspired by Emile Zola’s book Nana, given that they both depict a courtesan and the physical description of the woman matches very well. the gentleman on the couch makes a convincing Count Muffat. but I’ve just looked up this painting for fun and realized it was produced 3 years before the book!

Nana was apparently a common name chosen by late 19th century French sex workers. so, I was wrong and learned something just a little bit more interesting. I’ve always loved this painting!

The Sower with Setting Sun (1888)

Quote from the painting’s bio on the Van Gogh Museum’s website.

To Van Gogh, sowers represented the agricultural cycle and therefore the eternal cycle of life and its renewal throughout the seasons. As a man struggling with his mental illnesses, I think this theme was a very vivid, hopeful, and encouraging one to Van Gogh.

It also held religious meaning for him from the Bible’s Parable of the Sower, in which the Gospel is the seeds, the Sower is the person who spreads it, and the people are the soil who respond to it. While he didn’t believe in organized religion at this point in his life and the Parable of the Sower is not literally what this painting depicts, Van Gogh saw God in the beauty of nature and the emotions of people, especially from the lower class such as workers and farmers.

What’s so striking about The Sower to me is the deep reverence Van Gogh held for the rural and working class, whom many look past or look down on. I think if everyone saw the world the way Van Gogh did, it would be a place as beautiful as his paintings.