Trunk of an Old Yew Tree

Van Gogh's focus on the trunk of an old yew tree at Arles in 1888 represents one of his most concentrated botanical studies — attention given not to the whole organism but to a specific element of it, the ancient trunk with its bark texture, its particular dark reddish-brown coloring, its evidence of decades of growth. The yew was a culturally charged tree in the European tradition: planted in churchyards across England and northern France for their association with immortality (the yew's extraordinary longevity) and death, the tree carried symbolic freight that Van Gogh would have known. He may have encountered this particular tree in one of the Arles gardens or parks, and chose to paint the trunk specifically rather than the whole tree. This kind of close-focus natural study — eliminating landscape context to concentrate entirely on a specific natural form — connects his Saint-Rémy botanical studies (the grass, the butterflies, the specific orchids) to an earlier practice of intense close observation. His Nuenen birds' nests from 1885 are the precedent: natural objects given the full attention of portrait painting. The trunk's dark, textured surface challenged Van Gogh's brushwork in specific ways — the bark required a different kind of mark from the grass strokes or the blossoming flower petals that usually occupied him.

The yew trunk is rendered with intense close observation of its texture — the rough, ridged bark, the tree's characteristic dark coloring. Van Gogh's brushwork on the trunk is among his most texturally varied, building the bark's surface through multiple layers of differently directed strokes. The palette captures the specific dark reddish-brown of yew bark.