d scene, and the mixed oranges provide a harmonizing contrast when put next to to the blues of the dresses.Van Gogh’s understanding of colour came from the work of Delacroix and the Impressionists. In The Sick-Ward of the hospital at Arles, the artist controls a range of colours to create a very specific emotional impact on the viewer. He uses blue and gold to recreate an atmosphere of melancholy and claustrophobia by the precise shades and tints of the colours and the way he puts them together. There are reds and greens in the ends of the beds and their bedspreads, but in a submissive way, so that the dominant colours are a much colder series of blues. But the interesting point here is how the artist could manipulate a similar range of colours to express a completely different emotion.By comparison, Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles produces an optimistic response. Blue is again dominant in the picture; its is used in the walls, the doors, the jug, the reflection in the mirror and the coats hanging on the wall in the background. The towel on the left is tinted with green and a red line runs across it. There are oranges and golds and yellows in the bed and picture frames and the red bedspread complements the window’s dark green. The optimistic response derives from the combination of all these colours.As far as the new theory and newly found scale of colour was concerned, Impressionism was the outcome of the optical research of the nineteenth century. One could say that painting is about the expression of an emotion, but the visual language each artist uses differs depending on his chronology. The idea of painting developing in a historical way can appear to deny the notion that artists at different periods can be involved with similar concerns but carry them out according to the visual language of their time. Impressionism is the exact opposite to ancient Greek art with its well-defined lines and extreme clarity. The sense ...
