Vincent van Gogh – The Sower (1890 CE)

Vincent van Gogh’s The Sower (after Millet) depicts a peasant striding across a field while scattering seeds. The figure wears a wide-brimmed hat and carries a large seed sack slung over one shoulder. One arm is extended in the act of sowing. The composition closely follows the famous painting of the same subject by Jean-François Millet from 1850. Unlike Van Gogh’s more expressive and freely interpreted version from Arles in 1888, this work stays nearer to Millet’s original pose and structure. 

Historical Context and Creation of the Work

This painting was created in January 1890 at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where Van Gogh had been a voluntary patient since May 1889. After suffering a severe breakdown in July 1889, he found it difficult to work directly from nature for extended periods. As a way to continue painting in a structured and focused manner, he began making copies after works by Jean-François Millet, whose art he had admired since his early years. Between the autumn of 1889 and the spring of 1890, Van Gogh produced around twenty such copies, working from black-and-white reproductions. He regarded these copies not merely as exercises but as a means of engaging with Millet’s subjects while translating them into his own use of colour and brushwork. The Sower belongs to this group of works made during his time in the asylum.

Correspondence Related to the Painting

Although Van Gogh did not write a detailed letter specifically about this particular canvas, he frequently discussed his copies after Millet in letters to his brother Theo and to friends during this period. In a letter from Saint-Rémy he explained his reasons for turning to copying:

“I started making copies because it seemed to me that by doing so I could learn to understand Millet’s work better… and at the same time it gives me something to do that keeps my mind occupied.”

He also expressed a deeper artistic ambition in relation to Millet’s work. In another letter he wrote:

“I’d like to paint the pictures Millet did, but in colour – as Millet would have done if he had used colour himself.”

These comments show that Van Gogh saw the copies as both a personal discipline and a way of continuing a dialogue with an artist he considered a moral and artistic guide.

Artistic Context and Interpretation

This version of The Sower represents a different approach from the well-known 1888 painting now in the Kröller-Müller Museum. While the Arles version is bold, dynamic and highly personal in its use of colour and movement, the 1890 painting is more measured and respectful of Millet’s original composition. 

Van Gogh continued to see the sower as a powerful symbol – both of the cycle of nature and of the biblical parable in which the sower represents the spreading of spiritual truth. By returning to Millet’s subject during his time in the asylum, he reaffirmed his long-standing admiration for the older artist. The work can be understood as an act of homage as well as an attempt to find stability and meaning through painting at a difficult time in his life.

Materials, Dimensions, and Technique

The painting is executed in oil on canvas and measures 64 × 55 cm (25.2 × 21.7 in). Because it was made from black-and-white reproductions rather than from direct observation in the landscape, the brushwork is somewhat more controlled than in many of Van Gogh’s outdoor paintings. He nevertheless applied his characteristic broken brushstrokes and introduced colour where Millet’s original was monochromatic. The figure remains the clear focus of the composition, with the landscape serving as a supporting element rather than the dominant force seen in the 1888 version.

Provenance 

The painting was made in Saint-Rémy in January 1890. It later entered the important collection assembled by Helene Kröller-Müller, who had a particular interest in Van Gogh’s work. Today it belongs to the permanent collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands. The museum holds one of the largest and most significant collections of Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings in the world, including several of his copies after Millet.