"Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds" (1890), by Vincent Van Gogh

This coffee or tea mug is "Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds" (1890), by Vincent Van Gogh. It emphasizes the landscape by the use of two horizontal planes. He told his brother that his paintings expressed the grandeur of nature that his words could not. Impressionists were the Bohemians of the time, breaking conventional rules to create new ones. Van Gogh’s self-taught style lead the post-impressionist movement. Born in the Netherlands, Van Gogh began his career as a lay preacher in Belgium with intent to become a pastor. Being fired called for a career change, so he switched to painting. Without any actual formal training, he began by copying Japanese woodblock prints in his own style. Over a period of just 10 years, on average he produced one painting every 36 hours, so over 900 paintings! He was also a great letter writer, often including sketches of his works in his almost 900 (again) communiques. Some of these letters were to his artist friends, and they intended to form an artist’s