Two Poplars in the Alpilles near Saint-Rémy

Van Gogh painted the two poplars in the Alpilles foothills near Saint-Rémy during his extended excursions beyond the asylum grounds in the autumn of 1889. The poplars appear in a landscape framed by the rocky outline of the Alpilles in the background — a characteristically Provençal juxtaposition of slender vertical trees against horizontal mountain ridges. Van Gogh was by this period working with unprecedented freedom and speed, and the poplars have the quality of observed fact rendered with total assurance. The composition echoes his admired Japanese prints in its asymmetrical placement of the two trees against an expansive sky.

The two poplars are rendered in rapid vertical strokes of dark green and yellow-green, their forms tapering against a pale sky of blue-white. The Alpilles in the background are painted in thin, layered strokes of grey-violet. The foreground scrub is built from short, directional marks that create a vigorous ground plane.