Van Gogh painted Almond Blossom in February 1890 as a gift for his brother Theo and his sister-in-law Jo, whose first child had just been born. It shows big branches of white blossom against a blue sky. Almond trees flower early in spring, and the picture was meant to say that a new life was starting.
The baby, born on 31 January 1890, was named Vincent Willem, after his uncle. Vincent was a patient at the asylum of Saint Paul de Mausole in Saint-Rémy de Provence when the news reached him. He started the picture right away, for the wall of the baby's parents' bedroom.
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The gift came with a confession. In the letter to their mother in which he said he had started the picture, Vincent did not hide a regret. He wrote: "I should have greatly preferred him to call the boy after Father." The baby carried Vincent's name, and Vincent would have given him another.
He painted the picture anyway. He was a patient in an asylum, far from Paris, and a canvas was the only way to reach the cradle of a child he had not yet met. He did not wait. He started right away.
The picture is calm. The man who painted it was not.
What did Theo hope for his son?
That he would grow up like his uncle. Theo wrote to Vincent on 31 January 1890 to announce the birth, and the Van Gogh Museum records his wish: that the boy would be "as determined and as courageous as you."
Vincent answered through their mother. Around 20 February he wrote to her from Saint-Rémy that the almond trees were beginning to blossom everywhere, and that "I started right away to make a picture for him." He described it as big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky, to hang in the bedroom of Theo and Jo.
Theo had supported Vincent with money for years. This picture was Vincent's turn to give something back, in a month that soon went badly for him.
What You'll Discover
What happened the week he painted it.
Where those branches came from.
What the picture is not.
Who the baby grew up to be.