Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves

On 22 January 1889 Van Gogh wrote to his brother that he had just finished a canvas with an almost chic little look to it, a willow basket of lemons and oranges, a cypress branch and a pair of blue gloves. He had been out of the hospital in Arles for about a fortnight and was painting again almost at once, in a house he now had to himself. The fruit is the ordinary winter produce of the Midi, the sort of thing sold a few streets away. The gloves are the odd element, a worn pair laid in front of the basket, blue against all that yellow. The picture entered the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 2014, from the collection of Paul Mellon.