Rain, Auvers

Rain, painted at Auvers-sur-Oise in June 1890, is among the most formally inventive works of Van Gogh's final period, translating Hiroshige's woodblock rain into oil paint with a fidelity and boldness that represents the culmination of his decade-long engagement with Japanese art. He had collected Japanese woodblock prints since his time in Antwerp and had copied Hiroshige's Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge in oil paint in Paris in 1887; the Auvers Rain returns to the same problem but achieves a more fully integrated solution, where the diagonal rain streaks become an intrinsic part of the painting's structure rather than an overlay. Van Gogh was painting at extraordinary pace at Auvers — nearly one canvas per day in the final ten weeks — and this formal boldness reflects the combination of technical mastery and personal urgency that characterises the entire period. The National Museum Cardiff, Wales, holds what is one of the most graphically radical works in his catalogue.

Diagonal streaks of grey-white rain slash across the entire canvas, imposed as a graphic layer over the undulating green and yellow field below. The technique is almost printerly in its regularity — a direct translation of Hiroshige's engraved rain lines into paint. The effect creates a shimmering, screen-like separation between the viewer and the landscape.