Almond tree in blossom

Van Gogh’s *Almond Tree in Blossom* is a burst of spring that somehow feels urgent, like the branches might shake off their delicate petals if you look away for too long. Painted in 1890 as a gift for his newborn nephew, the work carries this weird tension between celebration and fragility—those white blossoms are thick as snowfall, but the blue sky behind them has this almost brittle clarity, the kind that makes you squint. You can tell he was looking at Japanese prints around this time, the way the trunk cuts diagonally across the composition like a slash of ink, but the texture’s all his: thick, impatient strokes that build the bark into something rough enough to scrape your knuckles on.
What’s fascinating is how the painting straddles hope and unease. Almond trees flower early, sometimes when frost still lingers—there’s this quiet gamble in their timing, which feels uncomfortably apt for van Gogh, who’d be dead within months. The blossoms themselves are rendered with these frantic little commas of paint, like they’re vibrating against the sky. And yet, compared to his later wheat fields with their crows and stormy swirls, there’s a tenderness here, maybe because it was meant for a child. He borrowed the subject from Japanese ukiyo-e, sure, but where those prints often feel serene, van Gogh’s tree is all nerves and joy and too much coffee, the branches twisting as if they’re still growing while you watch.
It’s worth putting this beside his *Irises* from the same year—both obsessed with floral motifs, but where the irises feel heavy, almost slumped in their vase, the almond tree strains upward, defiant. Even the palette’s different: no murky greens or bruised purples, just that stark blue and white, like he’s paring everything down to the essentials. There’s a reason this one gets overshadowed by the sunflowers and starry nights, but in its own way, it’s just as raw. You don’t just see the blossoms; you smell the pollen, feel the grit of the paint where he worked it too thick, and underneath it all, this gnawing sense that beauty’s always racing against something. Spring never lasts, and van Gogh knew it better than most.