Olive Trees, June/September 1889. Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust.
This painting comes from a series of 15 canvases that Vincent van Gogh dedicated to the subject of olive trees during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he committed himself after suffering a series of breakdowns. When free to wander the countryside, he explored the region’s olive groves. “The murmur of an olive grove,” he wrote to his brother Theo, “has something very intimate, immensely old about it.”
The artist’s animated brushwork and stylized passages of broken color suggest that he painted the scene directly from nature. They communicate the essence of olive trees with their twisting trunks and heavy canopy in the light of southern France.
