Undergrowth with Two Figures

Van Gogh painted this in June 1890, in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise just north of Paris, during the last weeks of his life. He described it to his brother Theo at the end of that month: violet poplar trunks crossing the scene like columns, the depths of the wood blue, the forest floor scattered pink, yellow and white with flowers and long russet grass. A man and a woman walk together among the trees, nearly swallowed by the tall trunks and the dense growth around them. He worked at a feverish pace that summer, sometimes a canvas a day. This is one of the last landscapes he finished. He shot himself at the end of July and died two days later, at 37.