Almond Blossom (1890)

How to look at it

Start at the thick branch rising from the bottom edge, then follow it as it splits and thins toward the top. Look for the buds that are still closed beside the flowers that are fully open, and the faint pink at the heart of some petals. There is no ground and no horizon, only branches and sky, as if you were lying under the tree looking up.

Why this one

A painting made for a baby. On 31 January 1890 his brother Theo had a son and named him Vincent. Van Gogh started this canvas straight away, as a gift for the child, meant, he told his mother, "to hang in their bedroom".

Spring as a new beginning. The Van Gogh Museum reads the blossoming tree as a sign of new life. Van Gogh himself called it "perhaps the most patiently worked, best thing I had done."

Learned from Japanese prints. The bold outlines, the close-up view from below and the branches cut off by the edges come from Japanese printmaking, says the Van Gogh Museum.

Never sold. The family never sold it. The nephew it was painted for later founded the museum in Amsterdam where it hangs today.

This canvas

Oil on canvas, 73.3 × 92.4 cm (28⅞ × 36⅜ in), Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, February 1890. The canvas hangs in Amsterdam.

Fact gap. Van Gogh painted this for his newborn nephew's bedroom, but Theo and Jo hung it above their piano, and right after finishing it he fell ill for two months. See what the record says.

Sizes vs the original

• 10×8 a shelf or nursery piece, a small window of spring
• 20×16 a little over half the real canvas, the branches read from across a room
• 30×24 about four fifths of its true size (36⅜×28⅞), a sky full of blossom over a bed or sofa

Paper & ship

Archival matte fine art paper, no bleed, 5:4 landscape proportion, within about one percent of the canvas. Printed from the public domain photograph of the painting without remastering the color. Made to order, rolled in a tube. A pale oak or soft white frame both suit it.

Quick answers

Who was it painted for? For his nephew, Vincent Willem van Gogh, the son of his brother Theo, born in January 1890.

Is it a good gift for a new baby? It was painted as exactly that. Theo and Jo first hung it above their piano, and later it hung in the bedroom Jo shared with her son.

Is this an original painting? No. It is an archival reproduction of the 1890 canvas.

Is the image public domain? Yes. Van Gogh died in 1890, and the photograph we print from is a faithful public domain reproduction. No museum endorses this shop.