The Sower and the Sheaf: Biblical Metaphor in the Art of Vincent van Gogh

Abstract

The solitary caster of seed is one of the most prominent leitmotifs in the art of Vincent van Gogh, one that appears in his first drawings and recurs with frequency in his painted oeuvre. This study traces the genesis of his interest in the motif, and its acquired meaning — personal, art-historical, religious — in his work. It explores Van Gogh's emulation of Jean-François Millet's mode of infusing secular motifs with spirituality, and focuses upon the impact of Millet's Sower and the biblical parable that inspired it. The significance of Van Gogh's sowers is amplified and enlarged by his late-life fascination with harvest themes, particularly the reaper, who is both the antithesis and counterpart of the sower in the metaphorical cycle of life and death to which Van Gogh was increasingly attentive as he contemplated suicide at St.-Rémy and Auvers. Van Gogh's many images of planting and harvest are shown to be parts of a symbolic pictorial vocabulary that depends on the example of Millet and speaks the same metaphoric language as the parables.

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Notes on contributors

Judy Sund

Judy Sund, who recently received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, has published in the Oxford Art Journal and Art History. Her research focuses on artists' responses to texts, and she is now completing a book on Van Gogh's interest in French Naturalist literature [Department of Art and Art History, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708].