Peach Trees in Blossom, 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh

Peach Trees in Blossom was painted toward the beginning of April. It is a much "milder" picture, overwhelmingly in pastel shades. Painted mainly with short, equal brushstrokes, it addresses an elevated all-encompassing perspective on the open country. It was done just toward the northeast of Arles, on the plain underneath Les Alpilles.

Van Gogh described the painting in a letter to his friend Paul Signac:

Green countryside with little cottages, blue line of the Alpilles, white and blue sky. The foreground, enclosures with reed hedges where little peach trees are in blossom—everything there is small, the gardens, the fields ... the trees, even those mountains, as in certain Japanese landscapes.

Peach Trees in Blossom was made a couple of months after Van Gogh had cut off his ear and during a "deranged" period wherein he was a patient at psychiatric hospital of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, located in the Romanesque monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole.