Cypresses

Catalogue numbers: F 613, JH 1746.

This painting was executed in June 1889 after the beginning of his voluntary confinement at the asylum of Saint Paul in Saint-Rémy. The loaded brushstrokes and the swirling, undulating forms are typical of the artist's late work.

Living in the asylum in Saint-Rémy, van Gogh repeatedly turned his attention to the no-man's-land between the wide world out there and his own confined world. When he looked across the low wall that enclosed the asylum, he found a whole world of subjects awaiting him. There was a range of hills, the Alpilles, with countless olive trees at their feet and an occasional solitary cypress crowning them to counteract the gentle ups and downs of the hills with a bold vertical.

The immense cypresses in this painting are seen so close that the top of one is cropped by the upper edge of the picture. Only the field remains to add an element of distance.