Vincent van Gogh, Painted in Arles, November 1888
Original Painting 12.8 x 15.9, Oil on canvas.
"Van Gogh had a special interest in sowers throughout his artistic career. All in all, he made more than 30 drawings and paintings on this theme. He painted this sower in the autumn of 1888. At the time, Van Gogh was working together with Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Gauguin believed that in his work Van Gogh should draw less on reality and more on his imagination.
Here, Van Gogh used colours meant to express emotion and passion. He assigned the leading roles to the greenish-yellow of the sky and the purple of the field. The bright yellow sun looks like a halo, turning the sower into a saint." (The Van Gogh Museum).
Credits: The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). This painting is on display in the exhibition Van Gogh’s Home: The Van Gogh Museum.
Linus Murphy Copy on Acrylic on 16 x 20 Gesso Canvas.
In Sower with Setting Sun, Van Gogh uses colour and rhythmical brushwork to turn a simple agricultural act into something symbolic and emotionally charged. The figure is not treated as an individual portrait, but as part of a larger idea —human labour set against the forces of nature, time, and light.
The sower moves across the foreground toward the viewer, with a deliberate, but humble and tired stride. Behind, the field is hinted at by muted colours: saturated yellows, ochres, and violets that vibrate with spent energy. The low sun, oversized and glowing, dominates the horizon, flattening space while intensifying the sense of heat and effort.
Van Gogh’s brushwork is assertive and directional. The strokes follow the contours of the land and water, and interestingly, the motion of the figure. Nothing is passive—sky, ground, and figure all vibrate with movement, heavy and tired after a heavy day of toil. Colour is used expressively rather than descriptively, heightening the emotional weight of the scene rather than its literal accuracy.
In working from this painting, capturing the true relationship between colour and brushwork proved especially difficult. The original relies on subtle shifts within bold hues and on a physicality of paint that reproductions often flatten or mute. Translating that intensity—where colour, texture, and gesture are inseparable—underscores how carefully constructed and technically demanding Van Gogh’s apparent spontaneity truly is.
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Room Image Credit: Room designed by FreePik at www.freepik.com
Claude Monet, painted en plein air, 1867 - 1868.,
Original painting 25.5 x 31.9, Oil on canvas. Credit: Artchive Art Archives.
“Ice floes on the Seine at Bougival”, a canvas painted during the winter of 1867-1868, confirms the presence of Monet who came to paint on the spot about 15 kilometres from Paris.
Already in 1865 and 1866, Monet had painted snow scenes around Honfleur and in Normandy where Boudin and Jongkind had encouraged him to paint in the open air ("pleine air"). In this context, an article in the Journal du Havre of 9 October 1868 recorded “we caught a glimpse of him [Monet], it was winter, during a few days of snow… It was bitterly cold. We noticed a small foot-warmer, then an easel, then a man wrapped up in three cardigans, wearing gloves, his face half frozen: it was Mr Monet, studying an effect of snow."
Credit: Office du Tourisme de Bougival
Oil on 24 x 30 stretched gessoed canvas.
The original painting by Claude Monet is a quiet study in mood and endurance, capturing a transitional winter moment that hints at the hard labour defining late-19th-century life. Rather than depicting winter at rest, Monet shows it breaking apart—the start of what would be a long, cold day, where work continues despite the conditions.
Ice floes drift and rotate across the Seine, rendered not as solid white forms but as shifting reflections of water, sky, and shadow. The complementary palette pushes subtle boundaries: muddy, dirty snow connects seamlessly to the darker greys and muted blues of the river. Small variations in temperature and tone suggest cold more convincingly than literal whiteness ever could.
Monet’s restrained, broken brushwork creates movement without drama. What appears simple is tightly controlled. In attempting to work from this painting, the greatest difficulty lay in maintaining that restraint—capturing the fragile balance between softness and structure that gives the original its quiet tension and sense of time passing.
The complimentary palette pushes the boundaries of its colours, connecting the muddy dirty snow to the darker greys of the Seine River.
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Room Image Credit: Jay Wilde
Camille Pissarro, Painted in Pontoise in 1867.
Original Painting 34 1/4 x 45 1/4 in, oil on canvas
'This view of Pontoise, just northwest of Paris, helped establish Pissarro’s reputation as an innovative painter of the rural French landscape. The critic Émile Zola praised the picture enthusiastically when it was shown along with another rustic scene at the Salon of 1868, writing, "This is the modern countryside. One feels that man has passed by, turning and cutting the earth. . . . And this little valley and hills have a heroic simplicity and forthrightness. Nothing would be more banal were it not so grand. From ordinary reality the painter's temperament has drawn a rare poem of life and strength."'
Credit: The Met Museum Collection, New York
Acrylic on 24 x 30 gessoed stretched canvas.
This painting is a treat to paint. It has a very interesting and flowing composition which floats the viewer's eye from one interest to another. The colours are very subtle yet capture the true feeling of a warm summer afternoon.
Pissarro was at the edge of the French Impressionism capturing the everyday of French rural life in this painting. The work is a celebration of the stoicism and beauty of rural life. Copying this artwork is truly a joy, it celebrates a time when hard physical work was the reality of life yet it created a beauty of reality.
Our Copy Cat Gallery's copy perhaps creates a warmer image than that which Pissarro originally created, but it seems to fit the bucolic landscape of the rolling hills, rural farmstead, and calm meandering footpaths.
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Room Image Credit: Room designed by FreePik at www.freepik.com
Claude Monet, Painted in Argenteuil, 1873
Original Painting 23 11/16 × 28 7/8 in. Oil on canvas
Monet and family lived in Argenteuil, France during the 1870's. Painted here is his (5-6 year old?) son, Jean, playing with a hoop with his wife, Camille, standing in the doorway. The pleasant weather, vine-covered house, and neatly kept garden, foreshadowing Monet's garden work at Giverny.
The painting gives a sense of tranquility and a content family life. Interestingly, this painting was also a celebration of his financial security for Monet had recent sales of his work to the Paris art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel.
Credits: The Art Institute of Chicago and Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Oil on Canvas 24 x 30
Monet’s handling of light and colour creates a convincing sense of volume, atmosphere, and lived experience. Like many Impressionists, he was less concerned with precise description than with capturing how a moment feels—how a place is remembered through light, temperature, and colour.
In this scene, sunlit garden foliage rises above the long afternoon shadows cast by the house. A figure—likely his wife, who frequently modelled for him—appears at the doorway, calling to their son as he plays in the shaded area. The composition suggests late-day heat, with the child instinctively staying in the cooler shade, a small but relatable human response to the environment.
Monet’s varied greens intensify the sensation of sunlight pressing down on the garden. The contrast between warm, sun-washed areas and cooler shaded passages along the path creates a palpable temperature shift across the canvas. Achieving this balance of warmth, light, and spatial depth without relying on hard edges or strong outlines is difficult, and it demonstrates Monet’s exceptional control of colour and perception.
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Room Image Credit: Room designed by FreePik at www.freepik.com
Vincent van Gogh, Painted in Arles, Spring of 1888
Original painting 28 1/2 x 21. Oil on canvas.
Painted in the warm spring in Arles in 1888. Van Gogh was overwhelmed by and in a state of high focus on his work. He wrote to his brother Theo about his work, "the trees are in blossom and I would like to do a Provençal orchard of tremendous gaiety." The early part of 1888 saw Van Gogh engrossed in the natural and manicured nature around Arles. He painted and drew a number of paintings of the orchards - fourteen are known to exist today. The sizes and materials changed throughout his studies but one thing was common: the overpowering sense of life and sunlight. This follows along Van Gogh’s admiration for Japanese prints and his fascination with eastern sense of composition and realty.
Van Gogh used a slightly more muted palette with a calmed brushwork approach. This was to connect the finished work more closely with the Japanese work he admired at this time in his life.
Credits: Photo by Peter Barritt, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, Manhattan, New York City, USA.
Acrylic on Canvas
In The Flowering Orchard, Van Gogh captures a transient, almost fragile moment in the springtime orchard. The scene is simple—rows of blossoms, light filtering through branches—but Van Gogh transforms it into a study of rhythm, colour, and the vitality of nature.
The blossoms are not depicted as precise floral forms but as energetic swaths of white, and green, layered to suggest movement in the breeze and the passage of light. The branches twist and intersect, echoing Japanese compositional influence, creating patterns that guide the eye across the canvas. The orchard feels alive, not static, and the energy is both observational and interpretive.
Van Gogh’s brushwork is vigorous yet deliberate. Strokes vary from short, dappled touches to longer, curving lines that trace the branches and ground, giving the painting structure without rigidity. The colour palette is fresh and springlike, but the subtle contrasts and interplay of warm and cool tones reveal a careful orchestration that belies apparent spontaneity.
Attempting to work from this painting requires attention to the underlying rhythm of form and colour. The challenge lies in conveying the orchard’s vitality without overwhelming the subtle patterns Van Gogh establishes, and in balancing direct observation with the expressive interpretation that makes the work distinctly his.
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Room Image Credit: Room designed by FreePik at www.freepik.com
Vincent van Gogh, Painted 1887
Oil on canvas on pressboard 17 1/8 × 13 in.
"This painting dates from the winter of 1887, roughly a year after Vincent van Gogh arrived in Paris to join his brother, the art dealer Theo van Gogh. It is one of a group of landscapes featuring the Butte Montmartre, a short climb from the apartment on the rue Lepic where Vincent and Theo lived. Montmartre was dotted with reminders of its quickly receding rural past—abandoned quarries, kitchen gardens, and three surviving windmills, including the Moulin de Blute-Fin. The nonfunctional mill had become a tourist attraction, affording spectacular panoramic views over Paris from the observation tower erected beside it."
Credits: The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.
Acrylic on 18 x 16 Gesso Canvas
In Terrace and Observation Deck at Moulin de Blute-Fin, the painting reads as much as a study of Van Gogh’s approach as a depiction of the scene itself. The brushwork is tentative, exploring form and rhythm without the full intensity Van Gogh would later achieve. The palette is muted, restrained, and cool, conveying a quiet moment rather than dramatic emotion. The work captures a fleeting point in a typical day in France, translating ordinary activity into subtle compositional energy.
The figures on the terrace are small and controlled, yet their placement suggests movement and interaction. In the Copy Cat interpretation, the scene is slightly “zoomed in,” allowing a closer observation of the visitors’ gestures and arrangements while maintaining the expansive feel of a cloudy, overcast day. Branches, railings, and terrace are handled with attention to balance and perspective, emphasising spatial rhythm rather than narrative drama.
Working from this painting challenges the observer to preserve the subtle harmony between figure, architecture, and atmosphere. Capturing the measured energy of the terrace, the quiet layering of colour, and the restrained interplay between detail and broad impression is essential to conveying the deliberate calm and observational intent that defines this work.
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Room Image Credit: Room designed by FreePik at www.freepik.com
Claude Monet, Painted plein-air in Argenteuil in 1874
'From a distance of ten feet or so, Monet's brushstrokes blend to yield a convincing view of the Seine and the pleasure boats that drew tourists to Argenteuil. Up close, however, each dab of paint is distinct, and the scene dissolves into a mosaic of paint—brilliant, unblended tones of blue, red, green, yellow. In the water, quick, fluid skips of the brush mimic the lapping surface. In the trees, thicker paint is applied with denser, stubbier strokes. The figure in the sailboat is only a ghostly wash of dusty blue, the women rowing nearby are indicated by mere shorthand.
In the early years of impressionism, Monet, Renoir, and others strove to capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere on the landscape and to transcribe directly and quickly their sensory experience of it. Monet advised the American artist Lilla Cabot Perry, "When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naïve impression of the scene before you."' National Gallery of the Arts, Washington, DC.
Credits: National Gallery of Arts, Washington, DC, from the collection of Henri Vever
Acrylic on 20 x 28 Gesso Canvas
This is an atmospheric painting, picking up the lightness of an early afternoon in the sun, but the threat of some light rain. This is a painting with a great deal of colour over a very limited value palette.
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