If you've never been to Provence you might think those cypresses are just background. They're not. They're a wall. The Mistral is the first thing that hits you when you arrive in the south of France. The sky is impossibly blue, the light is like nowhere else, and then this wind comes and it doesn't stop. For days sometimes. Van Gogh arrived in Arles in 1888 and the Mistral almost broke him before the orchards even bloomed. He had to stake his easel into the ground just to paint. Then spring came, the trees exploded white and yellow, and he painted them one after another knowing the blossoms could be gone tomorrow. Not because petals fall. Because the Mistral could rip them off in an afternoon. Those cypresses behind the orchard aren't decoration. Every farmer in Provence plants them the same way. They're windbreakers. They protect the fruit trees from getting destroyed. What you're looking at is a painting about something you can't see.
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