The green vineyard

Van Gogh painted the vineyards around Arles repeatedly in autumn 1888, captivated by the seasonal transformation of the landscape he had adopted as his own. The green vineyard, unlike the famous Red Vineyard of the same period, presents the vines in their summer or early autumn state — orderly rows of foliage receding into the distance against the flat Provençal sky. Van Gogh was drawn to vineyards as a subject that combined labour, season, and the deep roots of Mediterranean culture, all themes central to his conception of painting as social witness. The work belongs to a group of outdoor landscapes painted at great speed directly from the motif.

Regular rows of vine foliage are indicated with short, rounded strokes in a range of greens from olive to emerald. The sky is rendered in thin, fluid blues. A strong sense of spatial recession is created through scale graduation without conventional linear perspective devices.