Branches with Almond Blossom

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Branches with Almond Blossom: Vincent van Gogh

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - Branches with Almond Blossom

Keywords: Branches, Almond, Blossom

Work Overview: Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year 1890
Catalogue F671 / JH1891
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 73.5 cm × 92 cm (28.9 in × 36 in)
Location Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Almond Blossoms is from a group of several paintings made in 1888 and 1890 by Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Saint-Rémy, southern France of blossoming almond trees. Flowering trees were special to van Gogh. They represented awakening and hope. He enjoyed them aesthetically and found joy in painting flowering trees. The works reflect the influence of Impressionism, Divisionism, and Japanese woodcuts. Almond Blossom was made to celebrate the birth of his nephew and namesake, son of his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo.

In 1888 van Gogh became inspired in southern France and began the most productive period of his painting career. In connection with their painting Farmhouse in Provence (1888), the National Gallery of Art notes that

"It was sun that van Gogh sought in Provence, a brilliance and light that would wash out detail and simplify forms, reducing the world around him to the sort of pattern he admired in Japanese woodblocks. Arles, he said, was "the Japan of the South." Here, he felt, the flattening effect of the sun would strengthen the outlines of compositions and reduce nuances of color to a few vivid contrasts. Pairs of complements—the red and green of the plants, the woven highlights of oranges and blue in the fence, even the pink clouds that enliven the turquoise sky — almost vibrate against each other."[1]

When van Gogh arrived in Arles in March 1888 fruit trees in the orchards were about to bloom.[2] The blossoms of the apricot, peach and plum trees motivated him,[3] and within a month he had created fourteen paintings of blossoming fruit trees.[4] Excited by the subject matter, van Gogh completed nearly one painting a day.[5] Around April 21 he wrote to Theo, that he "will have to seek something new, now the orchards have almost finished blossoming."

Van Gogh's work reflected his interest in Japanese wood block prints. Hiroshige's Plum Park in Kameido demonstrates portrayal of beautiful subject matter with flat patterns of colors and no shadow. Van Gogh used the term Japonaiserie to express this influence; he collected hundreds of Japanese prints and likened the works of the great Japanese artists, like Hiroshige, to those of Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer. Hiroshige was one of the last great masters of the Japanese genre called ukiyo-e.[6] Van Gogh integrated some of the technical aspects of ukiyo-e into his work as his two 1887 homages to Hiroshige demonstrates.[7]

The Japanese paintings represent Van Gogh's search for serenity, which he describes in a letter to his sister, "Having as much of this serenity as possible, even though one knows little – nothing – for certain, is perhaps a better remedy for all diseases than all the things that are sold at the chemist's shop."[8] The southern region and the flowering trees seems to awakened van Gogh from his doldrums into a state of clear direction, hyper-activity and good cheer. He wrote, "I am up to my ears in work for the trees are in blossom and I want to paint a Provençal orchard of astonishing gaiety." While in the past a very active period would have drained him, this time he was invigorated.

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