The Siesta (La Méridienne, d’après Millet), 1890 by Vincent van Gogh

The Siesta, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1890 while he was a patient at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, reinterprets a composition by Jean-François Millet showing two exhausted harvest workers resting in the shade of a haystack at midday, their shoes cast aside and a horse-drawn cart waiting in the sunlit field beyond. Van Gogh transformed Millet’s somber tonal study into a luminous work built on the contrast between deep blue shadow and warm golden wheat, one of a series of paintings he made after black-and-white prints of Millet’s work while unable to paint from life. The rounded, intertwined forms of the sleeping figures convey a tenderness and human warmth characteristic of Van Gogh’s final years.

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890). Date: 1890.

The Siesta (La Méridienne, d’après Millet), 1890 by Vincent van Gogh. Post-Impressionist Figure Wall Art Canvas Print.

A note on this reproduction: this print renders in a deeper, warmer palette, with denim-blue clothing, amber-gold wheat, and a deep blue sky.

Also available as the first edition: View the bright, classic blue and gold edition of The Siesta. Same painting, with light powder-blue smocks and pale golden wheat.

Also available as a second edition: View the cooler, teal-green edition of The Siesta. Same painting, with a teal sky and seafoam-green clothing on the sleepers.

Also available as a third edition: View the lavender-toned edition of The Siesta. Same painting, with a violet-blue sky and lilac sleepers.