The Woodcutter (after Millet)

Executed in September 1889 at Saint-Rémy, this translation of Millet's Woodcutter engages one of the most elemental of all labour images — a man splitting wood with an axe, the most fundamental act of physical work in the European rural tradition. Van Gogh admired Millet's woodcutters for the same reason he had always admired images of physical labour: the body committed entirely to necessary work, beauty arising from function rather than from pose or decoration. His Saint-Rémy Millet copies were made from black-and-white engravings in the collection Van Gogh had assembled over years of enthusiastic collecting; he described translating them as 'improvising on an unfinished theme' — using Millet's composition as a score he was rearranging in his own chromatic key. The kinetic energy of the raised axe gave his brushwork a specific formal challenge, and the result is among the more dramatic of the Millet series. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The raised axe and splitting motion suggest a frozen moment of maximum physical effort. Van Gogh captures this kinetic quality through the directional energy of his brushwork — marks that reinforce the sense of force and movement inherent in the woodcutter's suspended gesture.