Basket of Apples

In October 1885 Van Gogh packed a crate in Nuenen, labelled it V4 and sent it off to Theo in Paris, with several still lifes of baskets of potatoes and of apples inside. Theo wrote back with a remark about the apples, and Vincent's reply of around 20 October is unusually pleased with him. Green and red are complementary colours, he explained, so he had set a coarse red in the apples against greenish things, then painted one or two apples in a pink that is those two colours mixed together. The background does the same job, a neutral made by breaking blue with orange and lifting it with a little yellow. It belongs to a run of basket still lifes from that autumn, most of them potatoes, painted in the two rooms he rented from the sexton beside the church in Nuenen.