Vase with Poppies, 1886

Vase with Poppies, 1886. In his Dutch years, Van Gogh had employed a tonal palette typical of the Barbizon painters and some of the Hague School artists. But in 1884, he encountered a new theory of colour in the books and articles he was reading about the French painter Eugène Delacroix. From these texts, Van Gogh derived the thesis that one of the distinguishing features and great discoveries of recent art that made it 'modern' was the use of complementary and contrasting colours in place of tonality and chiaroscuro. The basic message of his reading was that each primary colour - red, blue, yellow - has a complementary colour composed of a mixture of the other two. The complement of red is green; of blue, orange; of yellow, violet. Shadows cast by an object should include the complementary colour of the object. Complementaries are also used to heighten and intensify the brilliance of colour.  100% Hand painted art: Size: Various Sizes Available  Medium: Oil Painting on Canvas Ty