Horse Chestnut Tree in Blossom

In the spring of 1887 Van Gogh had been in Paris a year, and a flowering horse chestnut gives a painter about two weeks before the blossom goes. He worked fast and outdoors. The strokes here are short and set side by side rather than blended, the way he was handling paint all that spring in the company of younger men like Paul Signac, who took him out along the Seine to work. Before any of that colour went down he sketched the tree straight onto the bare canvas in charcoal. Those black lines are still there between the brushstrokes, and the easiest place to catch them is just below the foot of the trunk, where the paint thins out and lets the canvas show.