Landscape Under a Stormy Sky

Vincent van Gogh had come south to Arles in February 1888, chasing stronger light and stronger colour than the grey north had given him. This is one of his first springs there, and instead of the blazing sun he is often remembered for, he painted a broad flat field under a sky churning with dark cloud. A band of trees bends in the middle distance, the meadow below scattered with green and flecks of flowers. He laid the paint on thickly so the clouds seem to move. He had barely settled in, and would spend only about two years in Arles, but already he was out in the fields in all weathers, painting the flat farmland around the town again and again over the months that followed.