Orchards in blossom, view of Arles

Van Gogh painted this in April 1889 in Arles, in the south of France, only a few weeks after the breakdown in which he cut off part of his own ear, and just weeks before he checked himself into the asylum at nearby Saint-Rémy. The spring before, his first in Arles, he had thrown himself into a whole run of flowering orchards. Now, still unwell, he came back to the same subject, blossoming fruit trees with the rooftops of the town rising quietly behind them. In May he left Arles for the asylum, carrying canvases like this one with him.