Remaking Millet: Van Gogh's Siesta (Noon Rest)

This painting is Van Gogh's reworking of another artist's piece, reimagined in his own style. That artist was Jean-François Millet, the 19th-century French painter best known for depicting the lives of peasants.

Millet painted a series called The Four Times of Day, and it's the entry titled Noon that Van Gogh remade here. The resemblance is especially striking to a drawing Millet made of that same scene — the farmer's discarded shoes and tools, and the oxen grazing behind him — all of it carried over almost directly from Millet's original composition.

And yet, reworked through Van Gogh's own style, the mood is completely transformed. Beyond the difference in medium — Millet's Noon was in pastel, Van Gogh's Siesta in oil — Millet's version is soft and somewhat subdued, while Van Gogh's is bright and vivid. That difference comes entirely down to Van Gogh's use of color. The sky and the farming couple's clothing are painted blue, while the sheaves of grain and the field are yellow — blue and yellow sit directly opposite each other as complementary colors. Placed side by side, the two intensify each other through what's known as simultaneous contrast, and Van Gogh repeated this technique throughout the painting to convey the blazing heat of a summer day.

Among his contemporaries, Van Gogh regarded Millet as the most modern painter of his time, which is why he copied so many of Millet's works depicting peasant life. But as this painting shows, he never failed to fold in his own signature, intensely vivid use of color.