The Old Mill

Van Gogh's The Old Mill at Arles, painted in 1888 and now at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in New York, depicts one of the ancient windmills that were a characteristic feature of the Arles landscape. Windmills carried deep personal resonance for Van Gogh — he had grown up in Holland where windmills were ubiquitous features of the flat landscape, and finding one in Provence created a bridge between his Dutch origin and his southern present. The Buffalo AKG Art Museum holds a distinguished collection of American and European modern art, and this Van Gogh is among its most important European holdings.

The windmill is rendered with the same structural attention Van Gogh gave to other architectural subjects — its form observed specifically rather than generically. His warm Arles palette transforms the vernacular building through Mediterranean light. The surrounding landscape is handled with characteristic energy, the old mill providing a stable compositional anchor within the animated surroundings.