Van Gogh's Rare Animal Paintings: A Collector's Analysis

Vincent van Gogh produced approximately 2,000 paintings and drawings over a decade, yet animals appear infrequently and mainly as background elements. The Collector examines the exceptions. In 1884, during his time in Nuenen, Van Gogh painted Oxcart and Cart with Black Ox, both featuring an ox hitched to a cart; the works reflect traditional Dutch dark colors and may have been studies after Anton Mauve's Oxcart on a Country Road (1867). Flying Fox (1885) depicts a taxidermied fruit bat, possibly accessed through his friend Antoon Hermans, who owned 300 rare animals in Eindhoven. In Arles in 1889, Van Gogh painted A Crab on Its Back and Two Crabs, applying Charles Blanc's color theory with complementary red and green. Giant Peacock Moth (1889) was painted during his stay at the Saint-Rémy psychiatric hospital, where he found the moth in the walled garden and described it in a letter to Theo as a 'death's head' moth too beautiful to kill. Cows (1890), painted in Auvers-sur-Oise under Doctor Paul Gachet, was a copy of an etching by Gachet after Jacob Jordaens's Study of Cows. The article notes that Van Gogh's primary focus was peasant life, influenced by Jean-François Millet, and that his animal paintings are rare exceptions, often inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e prints or visual curiosity.