Butterflies and Poppies

Kept inside the grounds of the hospital at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh had to find his subjects within a short walk, and several of them turned out to be very close indeed. Grass, tree trunks, ivy, a great peacock moth, and here a tangle of poppies with butterflies over it, on a canvas about 34 centimetres tall. He built it from the front backwards. The flowers and the insects went down first and the blue came afterwards, which is why broad blue strokes run straight across some of the green stems. In places he simply stopped, and the bare cloth of the canvas is still showing.