Vincent van Gogh – Van Goghs Chair Part 6 National Gallery UK

Description of Vincent van Gogh’s painting Van Gogh’s Chair

The painting "Van Gogh’s Chair" strikes the viewer with the strangeness of its composition. It would seem to be an interior detail. But the image is by no means exclusively interior. In this case, we can say that Van Gogh positions the chair in terms of the central character of the picture, as if to spiritualize it.

The artist did not just involve this piece of furniture in the picture. In fact, what is a chair to you? You do not think about its importance in everyday life. However, it is the chair that carries a huge benefit. The chair is a support for everyone, we sit down on it and we don’t feel any tension in our legs. We rest in the chair.

Of course, there can be many variations of this piece of furniture. But whatever the modification, its basis is always the same - the seat, the back, the four legs.

Vincent van Gogh painted this piece inspired by a painting called The Empty Chair. It was by thinking about the meaning of this object that he eventually decided to make it the center of the composition and to embody it in Impressionism.

Underneath this object are Van Gogh’s complex and serious reflections on man’s place in life. What did an empty chair mean to him? If the chair was empty, it meant that someone had set it free. It was a support and encouragement for a person, but if there was no person, why would there be a chair?

The empty chair is a symbol of death for Van Gogh. It means that the chair is no longer needed. That its function as a support had become obsolete. It has become meaningless, exactly as meaningless as hundreds of other things that have only the essence of helping man and nothing else.