Landscape with Trees and Figures

Catalogue numbers: F 818, JH 1848.

Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1889 as a third-class voluntary patient. In the first weeks of his treatment he did not leave the area of the asylum and he only started to paint outside the walls in June 1889. During the rest of the summer the worsening of his condition did not make it possible for him to work outside, thus in July and August he painted mostly portraits and he copied pictures of his favourite artists, Millet and Delacroix.

Following the hardships of the summer months spent in the asylum, van Gogh continued his series of paintings of olive orchards. He painted about thirty canvases of the subject where he wanted to express the rural, close-to-nature character of the motif by using orange and bluish tones. He experimented on a personal, impressionistic style while painting olive orchards and developed it further on landscapes painted during the autumn; the present painting is an example of it.