Rain

Through the window of his asylum room, van Gogh watched a walled field soak under an autumn shower and painted the rain as slanting lines. He simply called it The Rain.

The story behind the painting

From May 1889 to May 1890 van Gogh was a voluntary patient at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a former monastery at Saint-Remy-de-Provence. Again and again he painted the view from his window: a walled field behind the hospital, which he showed in at least 14 paintings and as many sketches, at different times of day and in changing seasons. After The Reaper in June 1889 and Enclosed Field with Peasant around 12 October, he painted the field again during a rain shower a few weeks later, in November 1889 or during the heavy rainfall of 31 October 1889.

What to look for

The rain falls as slanting lines set at a different angle from the lines of the wheat field behind, so the downpour seems to cut across the land. The colours are those of autumn, subdued greens, grape blues and soft violets. The picture was painted on untreated cotton canvas and measures about 73 by 92 cm. Van Gogh took the idea of drawing rain as lines from Japanese prints, such as those of Hiroshige, which he knew well. Look for the enclosing wall that turns the open landscape into the small world he could see from his room.

Meaning and intent

For a man confined to an asylum, this one field became a whole calendar of weather and light. Van Gogh mentioned the picture twice to his brother Theo. Around 3 November 1889 he wrote that a painting of a rain effect was in progress, and on 3 January 1890, sending several paintings to Theo, he gave it the plain title La Pluie, The Rain. He liked the device enough to use it again, in Landscape at Auvers in the Rain and in two drawings of a sower in the rain.

Legacy

After van Gogh's death in 1890 the painting passed to his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In 1903 it was shown at the Munich Secession, where the collector Hugo von Tschudi bought it. His widow Angela inherited it in 1911 and lent it to the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. In 1928 it went to the dealer Paul Rosenberg, who sold it in 1949 to Henry Plumer McIlhenny, later chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He bequeathed his collection to the museum in memory of his mother, and the painting is there today.