Olive Grove

Vincent van Gogh was fascinated by the ever-changing colour of the olive trees. He tried to find a goog way of painting their irregular growth. His solution was to use wirling brushstrokes, bold outlines around the trunks and stylized blue shadows.

Van Gogh made his paintings of olives just after his friends Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard had painted a number of religious scenes. They created those works form their imaginations. Van Gogh disagreed with that approach. He felt that reality should always be the starting point: 'My ambition is truly limited to a few clods of earth, some sprouting wheat. An olive grove', he wrote to Bernard.