The orchards of 1888

The record dates Orchard with Blossoming Plum Trees to 1888, the Arles year. Blossom is the densest single motif of that year in this catalogue: thirteen works dated 1888 carry the word in their titles, six of them beginning with "Orchard". Plum, apricot, peach, pear, almond — the record names five different flowering trees in a single year, and no other year in the arc comes close.

What the record gives

The canvas is 60 x 80 cm and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette returns yellow and green as the dominant families, which is the ordinary 1888 result.

The motif returns at the end

Flowering branches do not stay in Arles. The record shows the painter coming back to them in his last year: Branches with Almond Blossom, Blossoming Acacia Branches and Blossoming Chestnut Branches are all dated 1890. Between those two clusters sits the Saint-Rémy year, dominated in the record by olive groves and wheat fields rather than by blossom. Arranged chronologically, the orchards read as a subject that opens the southern years and closes them.