Vincent Van Gogh painted this picture of a mulberry tree in stable periods between fits of epilepsy, while at the Saint-Rémy asylum in 1889. The paint has been applied in an extraordinarily frenetic manner, both with brush and with palette knife, twisting and turning the brush, heavily loading it with paint. The result is very spontaneous, but still reflects Van Gogh's great understanding of complementary colour. Van Gogh considered this to be his best rendering of a mulberry tree, according to comments in letters to his brother Theo and his sister. This copy is doubled in each dimension from the original - the latter resides in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA. |
