Memory of the Garden at Etten

Memory of the Garden at Etten, painted at Saint-Rémy in November 1888, is one of Van Gogh's most deliberately literary works: an imaginative reconstruction of the garden at his parents' home in Etten, Netherlands, which he had not visited for years. He populates it with two women who represent his mother and his sister Wil, though painted from memory and imagination rather than observation. He described it to Wil in a letter as resembling 'the colourist style of Gauguin' — a deliberate nod to his housemate's flat, decorative manner. The spiralling foliage and strange, dreamlike colour place it closer to the Symbolist tendency in his Saint-Rémy work.

Strongly patterned decorative treatment of the foliage, with spiralling, coiling strokes of blue, green, and gold creating an almost tapestry-like surface. The figures are integrated into the vegetation rather than standing clear of it. The palette is richer and more consciously decorative than his landscape plein-air studies.