Blossoming chestnut trees

On 16 May 1890 Van Gogh checked himself out of the asylum at Saint-Remy and took the train north to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village near Paris, wanting a fresh start among fields and ordinary people. The chestnuts were in full flower when he arrived, and he set to work testing his brush against them: flat green strokes for the leaves, short dark-blue marks stabbed in to give the foliage its weight, the white blossoms outlined so they read almost like little peaked roofs. The sky behind is built from soft zigzags, a calmer echo of the trees. He had a little over two months left to live.