Flowering orchard, surrounded by cypress

The blossoming orchard paintings that Van Gogh made in March and April 1888 represent one of the most sustained bursts of creative joy in his entire career. Having arrived in Arles in February after his grey Paris winter, he found himself overwhelmed by the Provençal spring: the fruit trees exploded simultaneously into bloom, the air was warm for the first time in months, and the light had the clarity and intensity he had sought by moving south. He made at least a dozen orchard paintings in rapid succession — peach, apricot, plum, almond — working with the urgency of someone who knows the moment will pass. This Yale version, with its flowering orchard surrounded by cypress trees, demonstrates his compositional genius in pairing the soft horizontal masses of blossom with the dark vertical flame of the cypress — a pairing that would become characteristic of his Provence work. Van Gogh dedicated several of these orchard paintings to the memory of Anton Mauve, the Dutch painter who had given him his first real instruction in oil painting and who died in February 1888 just as Van Gogh was producing this flowering work in his memory. The Yale University Art Gallery's holding connects this personal document to one of America's finest university art collections.

Van Gogh uses short, comma-like strokes to render the blossom, giving the trees a feathery, delicate texture against the blue sky. The dark mass of the cypress provides a strong vertical anchor. The palette is keyed to spring — fresh greens, pink and white blossom, with the warm yellows of sunlit ground.