Olive Grove

Vincent van Gogh painted this olive grove in 1889 while staying at an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, in the south of France. That year the olive trees captured his imagination completely, and he returned to them again and again, making around fifteen paintings of the twisting, gnarled trunks. He saw more than pretty scenery in them. In letters to his brother Theo, he described the trees as something almost human, with their bent shapes and worn branches, and he admitted how tricky yet satisfying they were to paint.

His swirling brushstrokes fill every corner of the canvas, from the streaked yellow and green sky down to the rippling ground where the trees take root. The color combinations are the real joy here, with warm reddish soil, gentle purples, and the soft silvery green of the leaves all playing off one another. The grove seems to sway and shimmer, as though a warm wind is drifting through it. This is a lovely reminder of how Van Gogh could take a plain stretch of farmland and make it pulse with life and emotion.