The Olive Trees

Van Gogh painted multiple versions of olive trees at Saint-Rémy between June and December 1889, approaching them with the same obsessive intensity he brought to cypresses and wheat fields. He wrote that olive trees were 'very characteristic of Provence' and that their silver-grey foliage and gnarled trunks gave him a vehicle for exploring the interaction of earth, sky, and organic form. He told Theo he was attempting to capture 'the great struggle between the trees and the ground' — the roots gripping the rocky soil like grasping hands. The Metropolitan Museum version shows the trees from close range, their twisting forms filling the picture plane.

Short, curved strokes in silver-grey, blue-green, and olive build the foliage with shimmering agitation. The trunks are rendered in warmer sienna and umber, twisted expressively. The ground beneath is worked in ochre and green with energetic directional marks contrasting with the lighter foliage.