A previous article discussed the confusion between pollard willows and pollard birches in the work that Van Gogh produced during his Brabant period (see ‘Pollard Willow or Pollard Birch?’). A similar issue of interpretation arises regarding his time in the south of France (1888–90), once again concerning trees.
Bearing in mind that the Van Gogh brothers corresponded with each other in French while living in that country, the misunderstanding in this instance is a matter of translation.
Vincent van Gogh, The Public Garden, October 1888, oil on canvas, 72 x 93 cm, private collection (F 472)
Yew?
During the summer and early autumn of 1888, Van Gogh painted a series of park and garden views, including a ‘jardin d’automne’ (autumn garden), which he described in a letter to his brother on 22 October: it includes two bottle-green cypresses, three small chestnut trees with brownish-orange leaves, and ‘un petit if à feuillage de citron pâle au tronc violet’.
The latter tree – a small if with pale lemon foliage and a purple trunk – can be seen on the far left of the painting. Its slender trunk has changed colour over time to what is now a greyish hue, cancelling out the contrast between the yellow and the purple that the artist originally intended. For as long as anyone can remember, ‘un petit if’ has been translated into English as ‘a small yew’ and into Dutch as ‘een kleine taxus’, both of which are linguistically correct.
Yew tree in the late autumn, Wikimedia Commons
All the same the yew (Taxus baccata) is a conifer, a dark-coloured evergreen tree or shrub with needle-like leaves, which with the best will in the world cannot be mistaken for the deciduous tree in the painting, the colour of its leaves turning with the autumn.
In the wild in Provence, moreover, yew trees (which are poisonous) tend to grow in the more easterly parts on the shadow side of limestone massifs like the Sainte-Victoire and Sainte-Baume mountains. Yew hedges are also found in graveyards and château parks.
How could Van Gogh have made such a mistake? Or was it, in fact, not a mistake at all?
Vincent van Gogh, Ploughed Field with a Tree Trunk (‘The Furrows’), October 1888, oil on canvas, 91 x 71 cm, private collection (F 573)
There is only one other reference to the if in Vincent’s French correspondence: he wrote just under a week later that he had completed a study of a ploughed field ‘with the stump of an old yew’ (‘avec la souche d’un vieil if’). For many years, the work in question was referred to neutrally in publications as Tree Trunk or simply Tree. In his 1928 catalogue raisonné, for instance, J.-B. de la Faille called it l’Arbre.
Painting and letter were not linked until some time later, with the result that in the revised edition of De la Faille’s catalogue in 1970, we find the title Trunk of an Old Yew Tree for the first time. It has remained in common use ever since. Once again, however, what we see is a deciduous tree with autumnal leaves, certainly not a yew, old or otherwise.
The ‘Bonger List’ is the handwritten inventory of Vincent’s paintings at Theo’s home in Paris, drawn up in late 1890 in the wake of the artist’s death by Andries Bonger, Theo’s brother-in-law. It includes the painting, numbered 178, with the description ‘Chêne foudroyée’ (‘Oak tree struck by lightning’). Andries was right to identify the tree as deciduous, but it is not an oak either.
Elm
Van Gogh must have come across the motif of the thick tree somewhere around Avenue de Montmajour – the road leading north out of Arles towards Tarascon. Arles itself can be seen in the background. Nowadays, we mostly find plane trees along Provençal roads like this, but historically elms were grown too. The deep vertical grooves in the bark of the old tree suggest that this must indeed be an elm, as plane trees generally have smoother trunks.
Van Gogh was usually well acquainted with the world of plants and trees and had already painted plane trees (platanes as he called them in his letters) on multiple occasions. It seems unlikely, therefore, that he would have twice mistaken a deciduous tree for a conifer: he was certainly able to distinguish between pines and firs, for instance (identifying them as pins and sapins respectively). So why did he use the word if for an elm tree?
Vincent van Gogh, Avenue with Plane Trees, March 1888, oil on canvas, 45 x 49 cm, Musée Rodin, Paris (F 398) © Musée Rodin (photo Jean de Calan)
The French name for the elm (Ulmus) is orme, but neither orme nor ormeau for a young elm are found anywhere in Van Gogh’s French correspondence. In his letters in Dutch, he only ever uses the word iep for elm and never the more traditional variant olm. There are no references at all, furthermore, to the yew (taxus).
In Belgium, by contrast, where Van Gogh lived on and off for a total of three years, the word iep (elm) was frequently confused with iebe (yew, also known as ijb or ijf) ‘due to the close similarity in sound’, as the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (Dictionary of the Dutch Language) puts it. The most recent edition of the Van Dale French-Dutch dictionary similarly notes that if can also mean iep in Belgian Dutch. What we can conclude from this is that Van Gogh really did mean ‘elm’ when he used the word if in French. He knew what tree it was and was evidently unfamiliar with taxus as the correct Dutch translation of if or with the French orme for ‘elm’.
The tree in the autumn garden is therefore a young elm and should rightfully have been called ‘un ormeau’ in his letter, while the sturdy tree trunk by the roadside is an old elm, correctly described in French as ‘un vieux orme’. There are no references to yew trees in his French correspondence any more than in his Dutch letters.
Vincent van Gogh, The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy), December 1889, oil on canvas, 73.4 x 91.8 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Hanna Fund (F 657)
Plane trees?
Despite Van Gogh’s substantial knowledge of flora and fauna, he did once make a striking error in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence regarding the plane tree, with which he was otherwise entirely familiar. Having so far paid more attention to the local olive trees and cypresses, he ventured into the built-up area in early December 1889 to make a study of ‘a view of the village – where people were at work – under enormous plane trees – repairing the pavements’, as he wrote to Theo.
The magnificent result The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy) shows a dug-up street with impressive, thick tree trunks, the tops of which are cut off by the upper edge of the painting.
But what Van Gogh saw were not ‘enormous plane trees’ at all. In 1992, Marcel Bonnet clearly explained in a little book about Saint-Rémy-de-Provence that the trees the artist painted were actually elms. This fact has never really filtered through, however, into the Van Gogh literature. Until well into the 19th century, the promenade (cours) of avenues and boulevards around Saint-Rémy’s historic centre was entirely lined with elms, the oldest of which dated back to the 17th century.
The section immortalized by Van Gogh – Avenue d’Eyragues (now Boulevard Mirabeau) in the east of the town – was planted with old elms, as we can see in a picture postcard dating from around 1905. Armed with this knowledge, if we look closely at the thick trees in the painting, we can clearly make out the elm’s characteristic, vertically grooved bark.
When these trees grew too old or became a hazard, however, they were replaced with plane trees, something that occurred along Van Gogh’s stretch of the cours between 1920 and 1930.
The elms along Boulevard de la Gare (now Boulevard Marceau) in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence were planted in 1648 and were replaced by plane trees during the 20th century. Picture postcard, c. 1905, private collection
This picture postcard of around 1905 (private collection) shows the Avenue d’Eyragues in Saint-Rémy (renamed Boulevard Mirabeau around 1910). In the rearmost part of the avenue in the background we make out the row of elm trees that Van Gogh painted. They are surrounded by a protective stone kerb, the installation of which in 1889 formed part of the works depicted in the painting
Uprooting of the elms that Van Gogh painted. Photograph by Frédéric George, 1920–30, in Marcel Bonnet, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Chronique photographique de Frédéric George (1868-1933), Marguerittes 1992, p. 82
The elms disappeared entirely in the first half of the 20th century in favour of plane trees, which helps explain why doubt was never cast on Van Gogh’s description: after all, plane trees are more typical of the Provençal landscape today than elms are. So much so that the Liste des arbres en Provence (List of Trees in Provence) no longer even includes the orme (assuming that earlier versions did). The ubiquity of the plane tree in Provence nowadays ought not to blind us, as the same publication notes, ‘to the fact that its acclimatization to the region is relatively recent’.
It was introduced in the 16th century before gradually increasing in popularity from the end of the 18th onwards for planting alongside roads and promenades and around public squares, not infrequently as a replacement for ageing elms. The plane tree is fast-growing and forms a dense canopy of leaves that provides cool shade in the summer.
The old elm tree in Gorbio (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur), planted in 1713. Photograph 2011, Wikimedia Commons
Motif
Although the shape of a large, old elm might occasionally resemble that of an ageing plane tree, Van Gogh could certainly tell the two apart in Arles. As far as his mistake in Saint-Rémy is concerned, however, he found himself in good company.
One of his favourite writers, Edmond de Goncourt, paid a visit in September 1885, describing Saint-Rémy in his now famous diary as ‘The little town in Provence beneath its tall plane trees’ (‘La petite ville de Provence sous ses grandes platanes’). ‘And to think that no landscape artist worthy of the name has ever thought to paint one of these boulevards’ (‘Et penser que, pas un paysagiste, ayant un nom, n’a eu l’idée de faire un tableau d’une de ces rues-boulevards’).
The relevant volume of the diary was first published in 1894, four years after Van Gogh’s death; yet this artist at any rate – albeit one with only a modest reputation at the time – had recognized the charm of the motif and offered precisely what Edmond de Goncourt was calling for.
Literature
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L. Jansen, H. Luijten, N. Bakker, Vincent van Gogh. The Letters, vangoghletters.org
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Liste des arbres en Provence, If en Provence ,
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J.-B. de la Faille, L’Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh. Catalogue raisonné, 4 vols., Paris and Brussels 1928
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J.-B. de la Faille, The Work of Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam 1970
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A. Bonger, Catalogues des œuvres de Vincent van Gogh, 1890, Van Gogh Museum archives, inv.nr. b3055V1962
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[Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal3
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Van Dale woordenboek Frans-Nederlands, most recent edition 2025, consulted via the app pakket8.vandale.nl
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M. Bonnet, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Chronique photographique de Frédéric George (1868-1933), Marguerittes 1992, pp. 81-82.
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E. de Goncourt, Journal des Goncourts. Mémoires de la vie littéraire. Tome septième 1885-1888, Paris 1894, pp. 71-72.