Twelve olive titles, all in one year

The record dates Olive Grove - Bright Blue Sky to 1889. Twelve titles in this catalogue name olives, and every one of them is dated 1889 — none before, none after. It is one of a small number of words in this record that belong to one year and to no other, and 1889 is the year this site assigns to Saint-Rémy.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 45.5 by 59.5 centimetres, a small horizontal, and it is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds twenty-two of the 116 works dated 1889. The measured palette reads as yellow.

A yellow reading on a blue title

The title names a blue sky and the measurement returns yellow, which is worth stating carefully: the measured palette records which colour family dominates the catalogue image, and a title is a name rather than a description of a surface. Yellow dominates seventy-six of the 116 works dated 1889, blue twelve. No description of this picture is offered on this page, because the entry is being read from a record and not from the painting.