The Mulberry Tree

The Mulberry Tree, painted in October 1889 at Saint-Rémy and now at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, is one of Van Gogh's most explicitly joyful late works. He wrote to Theo on October 26, 1889 that he had worked on the mulberry tree 'in a rage of enthusiasm' — the phrase conveys both his excitement at the subject and the physical intensity of his painting process. The mulberry's extraordinary autumn color — its leaves turning through golds, oranges, and yellows while still dense with fruit — gave him the most saturated warm palette he had encountered since the wheat fields of the previous summer, and he responded with brushwork of remarkable energy and invention. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena holds one of the strongest collections of European art on the American West Coast, including significant Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, and this Van Gogh is among its most celebrated paintings. The mulberry tree was a common feature of the Provençal landscape, cultivated for silkworm production, and its brilliant autumn color was a feature of the October landscape that Van Gogh captured in multiple drawings and this single major canvas. The painting's density of color and energy of execution make it one of the most immediately impactful works of his entire career.

The mulberry tree fills the canvas with its complex branching structure and dense foliage in autumn color — a rich combination of golds, oranges, and yellows rendered with extraordinary brushwork energy. Van Gogh's technique here is among his most accomplished, every stroke contributing to both the tree's physical structure and its emotional presence. The background is simplified to focus all attention on the tree's powerful form.