Cottage with Trees and Peasant Woman

In June 1885, with the trees around Nuenen in full leaf, Van Gogh was out painting the village cottages one after another. On 28 June he promised his brother Theo roughly three more of these painted studies before the harvest, to follow the ones he had already sent to Paris. This small canvas, almost square at about 47 by 46 centimetres, belongs to that summer's run.

Here the house is nearly swallowed by its setting. Two dark trunks frame it, the thatched roof slopes down to low grey walls, and the sky shows only in torn pale patches between the branches. A woman in a white cap stands at the door, barely separate from the shadow behind her. In the grass in front of the cottage, small touches of red and white pick out the flowers of early summer.