Rain (Van Gogh)



Rain (La Pluie; F650, H565, JH1839) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh, created in 1889, while he was a voluntary patient at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He repeatedly painted the view through the window of his room, depicting the colours and shades of the fields and hills around Saint-Rémy as they appeared at various times of day and in varying weather conditions. Rain measures 73.3 x and is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the United States.

Background and composition
Van Gogh was a voluntary patient from May 1889 to May 1890 in the hospital at the Asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a former monastery at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. One subject of particular interest of Van Gogh during his residence at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole hospital was a field behind the hospital, enclosed by walls, which he depicted in a series of at least 14 paintings and just as many sketches. He captured the field at different times of the day and in changing seasons. Having painted The Reaper in June 1889, which depicts a peasant cutting wheat with a sickle at the end of the summer, and then Enclosed Field with Peasant, around 12 October 1889, with a peasant carrying a bundle of straw in a bare ploughed field, he repainted the field during a rain shower a few weeks later. The later scene reflected the "subdued greens, grape blues, and soft violets" of autumn.

Rain was painted on an untreated cotton canvas in November 1889, or during heavy rainfall on 31 October 1889. Van Gogh represented the rain as slanted lines at a different angle to the lines in the wheat field in the background. In creating this effect, he drew inspiration from Japanese prints, like those of Hiroshige with which he was familiar. The painting is mentioned in two letters to his brother Theo van Gogh. In a letter c. 3 November 1889, Vincent said that a painting of a rain effect was in progress and, in a letter dated 3 January 1890 that he sent to Theo along with several paintings, he gave it the simple title La Pluie ('The Rain'). This rain effect was again used in Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, Sower in the Rain (F1550), and Sower in the Rain (F1551r).

Provenance
On Van Gogh's death in 1890, the painting was inherited by his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In 1903, it was exhibited at the Munich Secession exhibition where it was purchased by the collector Hugo von Tschudi. His wife Angela von Tschudi inherited it on his death in 1911. She lent it to the Neue Pinakothek in Munich and, in 1928, the painting was sold to the art dealer Paul Rosenberg, who in turn sold it to Henry Plumer McIlhenny in 1949. McIlhenny was associated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, serving as its chairman from 1976 until his death in 1986. He bequeathed his art collection to the museum, in memory of his mother, Frances Plumer McIlhenny.