Landscape with Wheelbarrow

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)

1883

Medium
watercolor and opaque watercolor with black chalk on cream paper
Classification
Drawing
Dimensions
Sheet: 24.9 x 35.7 cm (9 13/16 x 14 1/16 in.); Framed: 39.8 x 52.4 x 2.6 cm (15 11/16 x 20 5/8 x 1 in.)
Culture
Netherlands
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
Credit line
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

In September 1883 Van Gogh left the bustling Dutch city of The Hague in search of open countryside in which to paint. He moved to Drenthe, a village in northeastern Netherlands that was virtually untouched by the Industrial Revolution. He described the barren terrain as supremely beautiful and serene: "What tranquility, what expanse, what calmness in this nature." With a limited palette of steely greens and cool blues, Van Gogh masterfully portrayed one of the region’s expanses of heath—"a vast plane vanishing into infinity"—illuminated by the lilac hues of the evening sky.