Behind the canal - Etten-Leur
You stand here by a row of pollard willows; you will encounter about 250 of them. In Vincent's time, there were over 1,000 in this area. Also in Etten in 1881, the 28-year-old Vincent often went out to draw. On many of his walks, he passed the characteristic pollarded willows. He particularly liked pollarded willows. His sketches, drawings and later paintings bear witness to this. To him, pollarded willows symbolised the way people are also marked by life. The pollarded willows are a fine example of how an originally Brabant theme recurs in his later French work.
Vincent explains:
‘More and more I feel that particularly figure drawing is good, also works indirectly for the good of landscape drawing. If one draws a pollard willow as if it were a living creature, which is in fact the case, then the surroundings will follow relatively naturally as long as one has concentrated all one's attention on the conscious tree and has not rested before something of the life has entered it.
(Letter to Theo van Gogh. Etten, between Wednesday 12 and Saturday 15 October 1881)
‘I see in all nature, e.g. in trees, expression and, as it were, a soul. A row of pollarded willows has something of a procession of orphans sometimes. The young wheat can have something inexpressibly pure and gentle, which arouses such emotion as the expression of a sleeping baby e.g.’
Behind the canal
Achter de Vaart
4874 LT
Etten-Leur
Contact details
E: etten-leur@stappen-shoppen.nl
W: http://www.etten-leurcityapp.nl/
Public road, always open.
