Cypresses with two figures

Van Gogh started this in June 1889, a few weeks after he had checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Remy, in the south of France. Confined but able to paint, he became fascinated by the cypresses on the grounds, the dark trees he thought no one had really looked at properly, and set out to catch that difficult near-black against the sun-struck fields. The paint stands up off the canvas in thick, curling strokes, the trees twisting like flame while the vegetation around the two small figures seems to shake in the wind. He kept the picture until January 1890, then sent it to Albert Aurier, the first critic to praise him in print, as a way of saying thank you.