Pêcher en fleurs

Van Gogh reached Arles, in the south of France, in February 1888, half expecting the warmth of Japan he had imagined from prints. Instead he found snow. Then the orchards broke into blossom, and he worked like a man against a clock — the flowers last only days, and in about a month he painted some 14 canvases of fruit trees in bloom. This peach tree is one of them, caught wet and fast in the open air. One thing has changed since. The pink he used came from a red pigment that fades in light, so the blossoms you see now are gentler and paler than the ones he actually mixed and laid down that spring.