2. This description and the mention of ‘the largest of all in pink and green on absorbent canvas’ in his next letter must relate to the same work. This was
The pink orchard (
F 555 / JH 1380 ), the only large painting of an orchard on absorbent canvas (See Peres
et al. 1991, p. 27.
F 556 is also on absorbent canvas, but it only measures 55 x 65 cm). At size 25 ‘figure’ (65 x 81 cm) F 555 is a fraction larger than its pendant
The white orchard (
F 403 / JH 1378 ) (60 x 80 cm). It seems strange that in
letter 608 Van Gogh calls it ‘the largest of all’, but this can be explained by the fact that it was the largest work in the first series of orchards (in other words the first two triptychs,
see letter 597). True, the two orchards he painted after that, F 513 and F 551, are the same size (and he consequently calls them ‘large studies’ in
letter 608) but he painted them later, and his recollection was evidently that F 555 was larger than the rest.
Hulsker believed that it was
Orchard (
F 511 / JH 1386 ), which measures 72 x 92 cm (a no. 30 canvas); he links it with the earlier mention of a no. 30 canvas in
letter 591 and the left-hand side of the triptych in the letter sketch in
letter 597. See Hulsker 1993-1, p. 50, and Hulsker, ‘Het probleem van de
Verger rose’ (Van Gogh Museum, Documentation, Typescript). However, F 511 is not painted on ‘coarse canvas’ or ‘absorbent canvas’; it is moreover stylistically more akin to the orchards in blossom done in the spring of 1889. Van Tilborgh therefore argued that this pink orchard was not known and that F 511 dated from a year later. See Gijsbert van der Wal, ‘Met de neus op de bloesem. De datering van Vincent van Goghs
Boomgaard in bloei in het Van Gogh Museum’,
Jong Holland 17-1 (2001), pp. 23-25. Van Tilborgh and the editors of this edition now assume that all the references to the pink orchard relate to the same painting, namely F 555, which Van Gogh incorporated in his sketch of the decoration as ‘pale pink orchard’ (
letter 597). Dorn likewise believed that F 555 could be the work meant in the present letter and
letter 608; see Dorn 1990, p. 464.