FOR Vincent van Gogh, autumn was the most beguiling and poetic of seasons. ‘As long as autumn lasts,’ he wrote, ‘I shall not have hands, canvas and colours enough to paint the beautiful things I see.’ Here was the chance to use a myriad of rich tones, to fill skies with the drama of clouds and lay down in paint the sense of change in the air.
Autumn was a subject van Gogh turned to again and again. (1884), (1885), (1885), (1888) and (1888)—the season had a hold on him. And in 1889, between October and December, at the asylum near Saint Rémy where he was recovering from the breakdown heralded by the self-mutilation of his ear, it hadn’t let go. There, he depicted olive trees buffeted by the wind and painted over a fizzing picture of a flowering hillside with an image of a grey and green ravine instead.
