Bambino con arancia

Van Gogh painted this in June 1890, in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise north of Paris, where he had come after a year in an asylum to be near a doctor meant to watch over him. He had roughly ten weeks left to live, and he spent them working at a furious pace, close to a picture a day. Among the wheatfields and portraits he set down this small boy sitting in the grass, gripping an orange in both hands and looking straight out with wide eyes. The colour is loud and warm, the round fruit almost the brightest thing in the frame. It is one of the last children he ever painted, made in a summer he filled with more than 70 canvases.