A range named across two periods

The record dates The Alpilles with Olive Trees in the Foreground to 1889. The Alpilles are named in three titles in this catalogue, one dated 1888 and two dated 1889 — one of the few place-names that crosses the boundary between the Arles year and the Saint-Remy year.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 72.5 by 92 centimetres and the location is given as a private collection, the category covering twenty-three of the 116 works dated 1889. The measured palette reads as green and blue.

Where blue sits in the last years

Blue dominates twelve of the works dated 1889, down from twenty-six in 1888 and settling to ten in 1890. Green in the same three years runs sixty-five, fifty-three and fifty. So the pairing measured on this surface is made of one family past its peak and one holding steady, which is the ordinary condition of the last stretch of this catalogue. Whether the hills in the title are the ones the name usually denotes is not something the record settles, and it is not settled here.