This is a late work by Vincent van Gogh executed at a time when his style was at its most agitated and expressive. It is one of a series of olive orchards painted while the artist was a patient at the asylum at Saint Rémy in Provence, where he had committed himself after suffering a series of mental breakdowns. Van Gogh refers to the painting in a letter of July 1889 as an orchard of olive trees with gray leaves, "their violet shadows lying on the sunny sand." These shadows admirably convey the scorching heat of the Provençal sun, and the repetitive, rectangular brush strokes establish curving patterns of energy that heighten the emotional effect.