Cypresses

In the pictureIn the middle of the picture, two cypresses shoot up to the top edge of the canvas. Their branches swirl in thickly applied paint, and in the sky behind, a crescent moon and clouds turn in the same rhythm. The grass below does not keep still either. The whole painting seems to burn in one direction.

BackgroundIt dates from June 1889, just after Van Gogh entered the asylum at Saint-Rémy. He wrote in a letter that the cypresses were "always in my head, yet no one has ever painted them the way I see them," and he wanted to make a series of cypresses like his Sunflowers series. Paint squeezed straight from the tube and laid on thickly makes the brushstrokes stand out like relief.

Puzzle tipAs a puzzle, there are only two colors, green and blue, so sorting by color works less well. Instead, the thickness and direction of the brushwork differ from piece to piece, and zooming in tells them apart. First join the pieces along the trees' outline (the boundary where the green meets the sky) to build the silhouette, then fill the interior following the direction of the swirls. The crescent moon piece is a sure reference point.