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 the classic palette, with light powder-blue smocks, golden wheat, and a clear blue sky. Other reproductions of this same painting in our collection render in cooler or more lavender-toned palettes.