Flowering orchard, surrounded by cypress

Van Gogh reached Arles in February 1888, still shaking off the grey of Paris, and within weeks the orchards of Provence came into blossom all at once. He worked in a kind of panic against the short flowering season, finishing about 14 canvases of fruit trees in a few spring weeks. This is one of them, the entrance to a walled orchard, its yellow reed fences set up against the mistral, rows of leeks and lettuces at the foot of the trees. He described exactly that in a letter home, down to the onions and garlic. The dark verticals closing the scene are cypresses, which he was seeing for the first time. A year later, at the asylum in Saint-Remy, those same trees would take over his paintings.