Study with spruce in the fall

Study with Spruce in the Fall (1889) at the Kröller-Müller Museum belongs to Van Gogh's forest studies from the pine woods surrounding the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum, painted during autumn walks when he was permitted to work outside the garden walls with an attendant. The spruce or pine subject — its dark foliage against the autumn sky — was part of his broader engagement with the trees of the Alpilles foothills that he could observe from the asylum grounds. Autumn trees had been a sustained subject since his Nuenen years, when he painted the distinctive Dutch poplars and oaks with a dark palette entirely different from the southern character of these Provençal pine studies. The comparison between his Dutch and Provençal tree subjects reveals how completely the light and landscape of the south had transformed his visual vocabulary in the three years since his departure from the Netherlands.

The spruce is rendered with intense observation of its needle structure and conical form, Van Gogh's brushwork following the tree's growth directions with characteristic purpose. The palette captures the dark green of spruce needles against the autumnal surroundings. Paint is applied with varying thickness, densest in the tree itself.