The Sower II

This second version of The Sower, painted at Arles in 1888, returns to the subject Van Gogh considered the most important in his entire output — a theme he took directly from Millet's iconic image and transformed into a symbol of creation, renewal, and the cycle of life. Where Millet's sower is a heroic but realistic peasant, Van Gogh's versions are charged with symbolic intensity, often placing the figure before a blazing sun. The sower for Van Gogh represented the artist himself — someone who casts seed into the world without knowing what will take root — and these paintings bridge social realism and personal symbolism.

The composition is dominated by a vast furrow of plowed earth rendered in bold diagonal strokes, with the solitary sower silhouetted against a luminous sky. Van Gogh applies paint in thick, directional marks that express both the physicality of agricultural labor and his own intensely felt relationship to the subject.