Garden with Courting Couples, 1887 by Vincent van Gogh

In 1886 Georges Seurat developed a new technique called Pointillism, branching from Impressionism. Seurat's influence on Van Gogh is obvious. Before Van Gogh developed his own style, he experimented Pointillism with the same subjects, painting techniques and color combinations.

About this painting, in Van Gogh's letter to this brother Theo, he wrote:

As for me - I can feel the desire for marriage and children slipping away, and sometimes I am saddened about feeling like this at that age of thirty-five, when I out to feel quite differently.

And thre are times when I already feel old and broken, and yet still not sufficiently in love not to feel enthusiastic about painting. To succeed you need ambition seems absurd to me. What will come of this I don't know, but above all I'd like to be less of a burden to you - and in the future that's not impossible - for I hope to progress to the point where you can show what I do confidently without having to compromise yourself. And then I'll move away somewhere down in in the South so that I can get away from all these painters who disgust me as men.