The pink peach tree

Among the first paintings Van Gogh completed after arriving in Arles in February 1888, the blossoming peach tree canvases mark one of the most joyful transitions in his career — the dark Dutch palette abandoned virtually overnight in response to the Provençal spring. He had arrived from Paris in the depths of winter, and the emergence of blossom in the orchards around Arles in March overwhelmed him. Writing to Theo, he described the pinks and whites against the blue sky as 'infinitely beautiful' and said he was painting them 'in a frenzy.' He dedicated the orchard series to the recently deceased Anton Mauve, his cousin and early painting mentor in The Hague who had first encouraged his serious study of art. The diagonal reed fence that structures this composition was a direct borrowing from Japanese woodblock prints — Hiroshige's Plum Trees in Bloom had used the same device of a framing horizontal element to cut across the flowering tree — and represents one of Van Gogh's most explicit Japonist formal experiments. Now at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Delicate pink blossoms are painted with small, individual strokes that create a vibrant pointillist-like texture across the canopy. The pale sky is built up in thin, cool washes. A defining feature is the strong diagonal line of a reed fence anchoring the composition — a device borrowed from Japanese woodblock prints that Van Gogh had been studying intensively.