Around the southern French city of Arles, there were many fruit orchards. Soon after Van Gogh arrived there in 1888, the spring came. He enthusiastically painted a variety of flowering fruit trees: apricot, almond, apple, peach and in this case plum.

But Van Gogh was not satisfied. He took this canvas with him to Saint-Rémy (FR) and kept working on it from memory. 'I have found a way better to express the harmony of the tones', he wrote.