Flowering peach tree

Van Gogh painted the flowering peach trees of Arles in 1888 with extraordinary enthusiasm, writing to Theo that the blossoming orchards were the most beautiful thing he had seen since arriving in the south. The delicate pink-white blossoms against the blue Provençal sky seemed to him uniquely expressive of the south's particular vitality. He painted multiple orchard subjects that spring, and this Kröller-Müller version belongs to that concentrated series. He dedicated several of these orchard paintings to the memory of his recently deceased friend, the painter Anton Mauve, bringing personal feeling to an already emotionally charged subject.

The peach tree's blossoming branches are rendered with delicate, quick strokes that capture both the lightness of the flowers and their arrangement against the sky. The palette is high-keyed and fresh — pinks, whites, and greens against a luminous blue — the most optimistic chromatic range Van Gogh achieved. Compositional structure is provided by the tree's branching forms.