Landscape with Windblown Trees

Van Gogh's 1885 landscape with windblown trees belongs to his Nuenen period's engagement with the specific character of Dutch landscape, where trees shaped by centuries of prevailing winds develop characteristic wind-combed forms that become landscape signatures. The windblown tree was a subject with a long history in Dutch landscape — from Ruisdael's storm-bent oaks — that Van Gogh engaged with genuine observation of living originals. The dynamic of wind expressed through tree form was for him both observed fact and visual metaphor. The work's current location is unknown or private.

The trees' wind-shaped forms dominate the composition, their bent and combed branches rendered with Van Gogh's characteristic observational directness. The dark Dutch palette captures the drama of wind and weather without melodrama. The surrounding landscape is rendered more summarily, the trees themselves carrying the composition's energy.