Olive Grove

Olive Grove at the Van Gogh Museum belongs to the extraordinary sequence of olive tree paintings Van Gogh produced during his time at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy in 1889. Confined to the asylum grounds for much of his stay, he painted the adjacent olive grove with obsessive intensity through the second half of 1889 — the twisted, ancient trees becoming vehicles for the psychological and emotional turbulence he was living through. 'The olive trees are very characteristic,' he wrote to Theo, 'and I am struggling to capture that old silver, and at times more blue, at times greenish, bronzed, whitening above a soil that is yellow, pink, violet tinted or orange.' The Van Gogh Museum holds several canvases from this series.

The olive trees' gnarled trunks and silver-green foliage are rendered with Van Gogh's characteristic turbulent brushwork — swirling, directional strokes that animate the trees with an almost violent energy. The ground beneath is painted in warm ochres and pinks, contrasting with the cool, flickering quality of the foliage above.