Alain De Botton(1969- ) :
The Art of Travel, 2002
VI On the Sublime, pp.151-152
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Asked to explain why Job has been made to suffer even though he has been good, God draws Job's attention to the mighty phenomena of nature. Do not be surprised that things have not gone your way he declares:the universe is greater than you . Do not be surprised that you do not understand why they have not gone your way for you cannot fathom the logic of the universe. See how small you are next to the mountains. Accept what is bigger than you and what you do not understand. The world may appear illogical to you, but it does not follow that it is illogical per se. Our lives are not the measure of all things: consider sublime places for a reminder of human insignificance and frailty.
There is a strictly religious message here. God assures Job that he has a place in his heart, even if all events do not centre around him and may at times appear to run contrary to his interest. When divine wisdom eludes human understanding, the righteous, made aware of their limitations by thespectacle of sublime nature , must continue to trust in God's plans for the universe.
A few years after van Gogh's stay in Provence, Oscar Wilde remarked that there had been no fog in London before Whistler painted it. Surely, too, there were fewer cypresses in Provence before van Gogh painted them.
Olive trees must also have been less noticeable. I had the previous day dismissed one example as a squat, bushlike thing, but in Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun and Olive Grove: Orange Sky of 1889, van Gogh brought out (that is, foregrounded) the shape of the olives' trunks and leaves.
I now noted an angularity that I had earlier missed: the trees resemble tridents that have been flung from a great height into the soil. There is a ferocity to the olive trees' branches, too, as if they were flexed arms ready to hit out. And whereas the leaves of many other trees make one think of limp lettuce emptied over racks of naked branches, the taut, silvery olive leaves give an impression of alertness and contained energy.
After van Gogh, I began to notice that there was something unusual about the colours of Provence as well. There are climatic reasons for this. The mistral, blowing along the Rhone Valley from the Alps, regularly clears the sky of clouds and moisture, leaving it a pure, rich blue without a trace of white. At the same time, a high water table and good irrigation promote a plant life of singular lushness for a Mediterranean climate. With no water shortages to restrict its growth, the vegetation draws full benefit from the great advantages of the South: light and heat. And fortuitously, because there is no moisture in the air, there is in Provence, unlike the tropics, no mistiness to dampen and meld the colours of the trees, flowers and plants. The combination of a cloudless sky, dry air,water and rich vegetation leaves the region dominated by vivid primary, contrasting colours.
Painters before van Gogh had tended to ignore these contrasts and to paint only in complementary colours, as Claude and Poussin had taught them to do. Constantin and Bidauld, for example, had depicted Provence entirely in subtle gradations of soft blue and brown. Van Gogh was incensed by this neglect of the landscape's natural colour scheme: 'The majority of [painters], because they aren't colourists... do not see yellow, orange or sulphur in the South, and they call a painter mad if he sees with eyes other than theirs.' He abandoned their chiaroscuro technique and soaked his canvases in primary colours, always arranging them in such a way that their contrast would be maximised: red with green, yellow with purple, blue with orange. 'The colour is exquisite here,' he wrote to his sister. 'When the green leaves are fresh, it is a rich green, the likes of which we seldom see in the North. Even when it gets scorched and dusty, the landscape does not lose its beauty, for then it takes on tones of gold of various tints: green-gold, yellow-gold, pink-gold...