Blick auf Arles, blühende Obstgärten

Van Gogh painted this in April 1889, in one of the worst stretches of his life. His argument with Gauguin a few months earlier had ended with the cut ear, and he was moving between the hospital in Arles and his own rooms, waiting to commit himself to the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May. Yet the picture is a spring one. Across a canal, three bare poplar trunks rise in the foreground while behind them the orchards flower and the old town of Arles sits low on the horizon, the tower of Saint-Trophime to one side. The way the trees are cut off hard by the top edge comes straight from the Japanese prints he collected and admired. He thought enough of this canvas to pack it up and take it with him to Saint-Rémy, and he later chose it for an exhibition in Brussels.