Why yellow was Van Gogh’s favourite colour – The Art Newspaper

Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour opened this week in Amsterdam (until 17 May). The Van Gogh Museum’s new exhibition focuses on paintings by a range of artists in which yellow is the predominant colour.

In Arles, when Vincent was at the height of his powers, he wrote in great excitement to his brother Theo: “Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word I can only call yellow — pale sulphur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!”

Although we perceive the sun and its light as yellow, it actually emits white light. Sunlight is scattered when it passes through earth’s atmosphere, making the sky appear blue and the sun yellow.

Van Gogh’s most famous yellow painting is, of course, his Sunflowers. The prime version (August 1888) is now at London’s National Gallery, but he soon went on to make two copies with a yellow background, one of which is in Amsterdam (January 1889) and the other in Tokyo (December 1888-January 1889).

The Amsterdam picture, which is displayed at the start of the new exhibition, is the result of Van Gogh’s effort to achieve what he described as a “high yellow note”. He actually used three shades of the pigment chrome yellow: pale lemon, a deeper shade, and an orange hue.

Although chrome yellow pigments initially provide a bright colour, unfortunately its intensity does not last. It fades and darkens over time. The Van Gogh Museum therefore now displays their painting under relatively low lighting, less than 50 lux of light. Just think, his Sunflowers would have originally looked even more intense than they do today.

Between April 1888 and April 1889, Vincent asked Theo to send him no fewer than 66 large tubes of yellow chrome paint from Paris. This means that Van Gogh would have used, on average, over a third of a large tube of yellow for every one of his Arles paintings.

The exhibition Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour emphasises that in the late-19th century in France yellow became regarded as the colour of modernity. This was partly because of the yellow-covered paperback books published with contemporary authors such as Emile Zola and the Goncourt brothers. In England, the idea was taken up in the 1890s with the publication of the literary quarterly The Yellow Book, which carried illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley and was supported by Oscar Wilde.

Van Gogh set out to use yellow to evoke emotions, often to reflect the life-giving energy of the sun. He particularly employed it when painting ripened fields of wheat under the blazing sun of Provence. For Van Gogh, it brought light and life-giving energy. In his letters, he described the sun as cheerful, sparkling, and on one occasion as “mysterious”.

Van Gogh’s love of yellow almost certainly inspired his colleague Paul Gauguin, who a few weeks after his return to Paris from Arles began a series of 11 prints. Known as the Volpini suite, they are printed on a vivid yellow paper.

The Amsterdam show, curated by Ann Blokland and Edwin Becker, includes eight Van Gogh paintings, all from the museum’s own collection. Among them are Quinces, Lemons, Pears and Grapes (September-October 1887), for which Van Gogh painted a frame, appropriately mainly in hues of yellow.

Another key work in the show is The Yellow House (September 1888), depicting the home which he would soon share with Gauguin for nine weeks. As Vincent wrote to Theo: “It’s painted yellow outside, whitewashed inside — in the full sunshine.”

At Van Gogh’s funeral, on 30 July 1890, his friends recalled yellow as his favourite colour. Emile Bernard wrote that sunflowers were arranged around his coffin. Yellow represented “the symbol of the light that he sought in people’s hearts as well as in works of art”.

Other artists in Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour include Edouard Manet, Aristide Maillol, Cuno Amiet, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondriaan and Olafur Eliasson.

So closely is Van Gogh now associated with yellow that the Van Gogh Museum has chosen to present its website homepage against a background of this colour. Although few web viewers probably consciously make the connection, colour can have an emotional impact.

Other Van Gogh news:

A new book has just been published on the artist’s year at the asylum in 1889-90: Vincent van Gogh in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Published by Milan-based Silvana Editoriale, it comprises six essays by mainly local authors who know the area intimately.

Martin Bailey is a leading Van Gogh specialist and special correspondent for The Art Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery, Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written a number of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are also now available in a more compact paperback format.

His other recent books include Living with Vincent van Gogh: The Homes & Landscapes that shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which provides an overview of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Friend Van Gogh/Emile Bernard provides the first English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please email vangogh@theartnewspaper.com

Please note that he does not undertake authentications.

Explore all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh here