Cypresses

Van Gogh's Cypresses, painted in June 1889 during his voluntary stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy, marks one of his most obsessive subjects. He wrote to Theo that cypresses 'are as beautiful as Egyptian obelisks' and that no one had yet painted them 'as I see them.' He was disturbed that traditional painting treated them as mere staffage in landscape backgrounds. The New York Metropolitan Museum version ranks among the finest, with the dark forms twisting violently against the swirling sky — an image of tremendous energy that anticipates the dynamic mark-making of The Starry Night painted the same month.

The cypress trunks are built from short upward-curving strokes of near-black green, modulated with touches of yellow and grey. The sky swirls in broad undulating bands of blue and white. The impasto is exceptionally heavy, with ridges of paint projecting from the surface.