Red Chestnuts in the Public Park at Arles

Red Chestnuts in the Public Park at Arles (1889) at the Courtauld Gallery connects two of Van Gogh's primary Arles subjects — the public garden across from the Yellow House and the specific quality of spring and autumn colour in Provençal trees. The red chestnut trees, with their distinctive canopy of dark red-green leaves, provided a more sombre colour than the blossoming orchards of spring, and the park subject in autumn carried a different register from the Poet's Garden series of summer and early autumn 1888. The Courtauld Gallery holds this alongside the Peach Trees in Blossom and the Bandaged Ear self-portrait — three works from different phases of his Arles and post-Arles period that together span the emotional range of his Southern French years. The chestnut's specific red-brown foliage, rendered with Van Gogh's characteristic urgency, gives the composition a chromatic richness unusual in his park paintings.

The chestnut blossoms provide vivid red accents against the surrounding greens of the park. Van Gogh's Arles palette handles the complementary contrast of red flowers and green foliage with the assurance of his mature period. Brushwork is energetic and varied, the flowering trees rendered with considerable expressive freedom.