1889-06 · Saint-Rémy-de-Provence · Knot of Motif

The Olive Groves

He had to get the tree right first. So he painted, among the olive trees, over and over.

F585 Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889
F707 Olive Picking 1889
F710 Olive Grove (orange sky) 1889

The Colour Experimenter

"The white sky and the white and green ground, with a little violet and pink in the trunks." The smallest-scale sentence the colour experimenter ever wrote. Most people would say an olive tree is green; he said one trunk holds "a little violet and a little pink." Under Provençal sun he saw one layer more than ordinary eyes — the silver underside of leaves, the sun-baked pink of the trunk, the violet reflections in shadow — each treated as an independent colour unit and recorded. The colour experimenter at his highest resolution: seeing seven colours inside green.

Synaesthetic Precision

Twisting trunks, twisting brushwork — most observers call this emotional; he called it harsh realism. Provençal olive trees do grow that way — their trunks have actually been wrung by wind, by time, by the orientation of the mountains. He saw the physical fact of being twisted and translated it back with brushwork that twists the same way. Synaesthetic precision is here the opposite of projection — recognising the existing twist in the object, not imposing one. The olive tree is shaped that way already; he just refused to straighten it.

Painting

More than a dozen oil paintings, from summer through autumn through harvest. Three representatives: Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background — silver sky, silver-green leaves, violet shadows, distant mountains. Olive Picking — peasant women bending to gather fruit, named and shaped like Millet's. Olive Grove (orange sky) — sky pushed to a burning orange, trees twisted in blue-green. He worked at least six different palettes on the same family of trees, each tuned to a different light, wind, hour.

Letter

1889. He wrote to Theo: "Gauguin and Bernard now talk of painting Christs in the Garden of Olives. I don't want to paint imaginary things. The olive trees are too beautiful for me to dare to invent them." Another: "The olive trees with the white sky and the white and green ground, with a little violet and pink in the trunks." A third: "What I have done is a rather harsh realism beside what they do." The three sentences, taken together, are an artistic manifesto: not gods, what is seen; not invention, but looking; harsh realism.

Place

The olive groves around Saint-Rémy. They surround the Saint-Paul Hospital. The olive trees of Provence carry hundreds of years — trunks wrung, fissured, like the bones of an old hand. Through summer and autumn he went daily to the same grove, watching the same tree change colour under different light. Gauguin was in Pont-Aven painting an imagined Christ at the same time. Vincent was outside the asylum painting a real olive tree. This was his clearest refusal of symbolism.

The Colour Experimenter

Synaesthetic Precision

before

Gauguin and Bernard wrote urging him to work more from imagination, to paint subjects with religious and symbolic meaning, without having to stand before the motif itself.

now

He refused. He said he would stay among the olive trees and paint, that he would first really understand what an olive tree was before speaking of religion. He painted them many times, testing their effect again and again under different weather, earth and sky.

after

He said that after this set of olive trees he understood more clearly what he wanted — but he did not say what that was.

Events

1889-06 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 783
Stepped beyond the asylum wall to paint the first olives. 'The olive trees with the white sky and the white and green ground, with a little violet and pink in the trunks.' The smallest-scale sentence the colour experimenter ever wrote
1889-08 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 805
End of summer — twisted olive trunks turning into twisting brushstrokes under his hand. Not 'emotional' but 'harsh realism' — the trees actually grow that way
1889-10 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 822
Heard that Gauguin and Bernard had both painted imagined Christs in the Garden of Olives. Vincent refused: 'I don't want to paint imaginary things. The olive trees are too beautiful for me to dare to invent them.'
1889-11 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 822
'What I have done is a rather harsh realism beside what they do.' An artistic manifesto: not gods, what is seen; not invention, but looking
1889-11 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 823
Completed Olive Grove (orange sky) — sky pushed to a burning orange, trees twisted in blue-green. He used at least six different palettes on the same grove
1889-12 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 823
Completed Olive Picking — peasant women bending to gather fruit. The same name and shape as Millet's peasants, but the colour is Provençal silver and violet

From the Letters

Gauguin et Bernard parlent maintenant de peindre des Christ au jardin des oliviers. Moi je ne veux pas peindre de choses imaginaires. Les oliviers sont trop beaux pour que j'ose les inventer.

Gauguin and Bernard now talk of painting Christs in the Garden of Olives. I don't want to paint imaginary things. The olive trees are too beautiful for me to dare to invent them.

Letter 822

Les oliviers avec le ciel blanc et le terrain blanc et vert, avec un peu de violet et de rose dans les troncs.

The olive trees with the white sky and the white and green ground, with a little violet and pink in the trunks.

Letter 823

Ce que j'ai fait c'est un réalisme plutôt dur à côté de ce qu'ils font.

What I have done is a rather harsh realism beside what they do.

Letter 822

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org

Technique Evidence

This work appears as evidence in this site’s technique-evolution axis.

The World in Motion 1889.05 – 1890.05 Open period F585 / JH1740 Olive Trees series Colour Representative of the changed colour system Brushstroke Representative of swirling brushwork