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Lot Essay
In a letter to his brother Theo, dated 26 July 1882 the artist described the location and subject of the present watercolor, "When you come, I know a few beautiful paths through the meadows where it is so quiet and restful that I am sure you will like it...I saw a dead willow trunk there, just the thing for Barye, for instance. It was hanging over a pool that was covered with reeds, quite alone and melancholy, and its bark was moss-covered and scaly, somewhat like the skin of a serpent--greenish, yellowish, but mostly a dull black, with bare white spots and knotted branches. I am going to attack it tomorrow morning" (Letter 220).
In his next letter dated 31 July 1882 he enclosed a sketch of the willow and wrote, "I have attacked that old giant of a pollard willow, and I think it is the best of the watercolors. A gloomy landscape--that dead tree near a stagnant pool covered with reeds, in the distance a car shed of the Rhine Railway Company where the tracks cross each other; dingy black buildings, then green meadows, a cinder path, and a sky with scudding clouds, gray with a single bright white border, and a depth of blue where the clouds are momentarily rent apart. In short, I wanted to make it the way the signal man in his smock and with his little red flag must see and feel it when he thinks, "It is gloomy weather today" (Letter 221).
The watercolor was also reproduced in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's film 'Lust for Life', produced in 1956, and based on Irving Stone's novel of the life of van Gogh.
In his next letter dated 31 July 1882 he enclosed a sketch of the willow and wrote, "I have attacked that old giant of a pollard willow, and I think it is the best of the watercolors. A gloomy landscape--that dead tree near a stagnant pool covered with reeds, in the distance a car shed of the Rhine Railway Company where the tracks cross each other; dingy black buildings, then green meadows, a cinder path, and a sky with scudding clouds, gray with a single bright white border, and a depth of blue where the clouds are momentarily rent apart. In short, I wanted to make it the way the signal man in his smock and with his little red flag must see and feel it when he thinks, "It is gloomy weather today" (Letter 221).
The watercolor was also reproduced in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's film 'Lust for Life', produced in 1956, and based on Irving Stone's novel of the life of van Gogh.