Paris · 1887 · Japanese · learning through copying
Plum tree in bloom according to Hiroshige
Van Gogh does not hide his model: he enlarges it, translates it into oil, pushes its colors to incandescence and frames the image with Japanese signs. Copying here becomes a method for dismantling a composition, understanding another visual grammar and inventing your own painting.
The short answer
A faithful copy in its structure, radically personal in its color
The painting is less a servile imitation than a translation exercise. Van Gogh learns how a Japanese image frames, simplifies, prioritizes and decorates; the material of the oil then allows it to shift its energy.
The Plum tree in bloom after Hiroshige, titled by the museum Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige), was painted in Paris in October - November 1887. Van Gogh worked from a print from his own collection: The Kameido Plum Residence, created by Utagawa Hiroshige in 1857 for the series of One hundred famous views of Edo.
The choice of the word "after" is essential. Van Gogh does not try to make people believe that the motif belongs to him. On the contrary, he exposes the filiation. It is by repeating a foreign solution - cut framing, compressed depth, reduced silhouettes, large flat areas - that he measures what his own painting can do with it.
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh
- Date and place
- Paris, October-November 1887
- Technique
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 55.6 × 46.8 cm
- Collection
- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
- References
- F 371 · JH 1296 · s0115V1962
Face-to-face
Same framework, two image regimes
Look at the entire works first. The large diagonal trunk is almost identical, but the print organizes silence while Van Gogh thickens the surface, speeds up the color and makes each area more sonorous.
Hiroshige: a seasonal print
The very close trunk acts like a screen. Behind it, the orchard, the fence and the walkers unfold in layers. The gradation from red to white then blue gives the scene its time and depth.
See Hiroshige's print →Van Gogh: color takes over
The red becomes denser, the ground frankly green, the branches dark blue and purple-brown. The visible touch vibrates what the print on wood made more uniform. The orange borders transform the image into a total decorative object.
See Van Gogh's version →The foreground
Trunk cuts image instead of politely opening perspective.
The depth
It arises from overlaps and color changes, not from a central vanishing point.
The figures
Tiny, they give scale and enliven the place without becoming the subject.
The material
Hiroshige prints surfaces; Van Gogh leaves the brush and thickness visible.
The frame
Van Gogh adds two orange stripes which make the edge an active part of the work.
Workshop method
Copying, here, means dismantling then rebuilding
Copying allows Van Gogh to slow down his gaze. Each choice of Hiroshige becomes a concrete problem to be solved with canvas, brushes and oil paint.
Isolate the composition
The general design is taken up precisely: diagonal of the trunk, bouquets of flowers, fence, walkers and dark slope on the right.
Change support
A printed sheet becomes a canvas. The passage imposes another scale and replaces the sharpness of the wood engraved with the gesture of the brush.
Force the complements
Reds and greens, oranges and blues respond to each other. Van Gogh increases the contrast to understand how a simple palette can carry the whole image.
Make the surface tactile
Flowers are no longer just white signs: they become thick touches. The sky itself keeps track of the application.
Invent the perimeter
Japanese characters do not translate the scene. The museum specifies that they are added for a decorative and exotic effect.
True learning is not in the final resemblance, but in the decisions that repetition requires understanding.Editorial reading of Van Gogh's method, based on the comparison of the two works and the notices of the Van Gogh Museum.
Look closely
Five details that show where the copy becomes Van Gogh
The cropping below comes from the same canvas. They do not replace the entire view: they are used to examine the material, the circulation of contours and the role of the frame.
From printed gradient to painted colored tablecloth
Red is never perfectly smooth. Darker passages, pink or orange, reveal the work of the brush and give the sky material density.
Signs treated like shapes
Black on orange, writing becomes vertical rhythm. Its role is visual before being linguistic.
Black breaks down into color
Purple-brown, dark red and blue take turns. The outline remains powerful, but it is no longer a neutral line.
The crowd is held together in a few accents
Yellow, blue, green and brown are enough to distinguish visitors. The human miniature reinforces the gigantic scale of the trunk.
Green becomes an autonomous scene
In the print, the lower area is cool and dark. Van Gogh takes it towards a more frank green, punctuated with thick flowers and crossed by the branches as if by a graphic network.
Paris, modern laboratory
Print collected in Japan dreamed of Provence
The painting belongs to a brief but decisive moment. In Paris, Van Gogh discovered prints as a collector, exhibition organizer and painter. A few months later, in Arles, their lessons structured his way of seeing the South.
Hiroshige publishes Kameido
The print appears in the One hundred famous views of Edo, at the publisher Sakanaya Eikichi.
Vincent joins Theo
The Parisian market gives him access to ukiyo-e prints sold in large numbers.
A print exhibition
Vincent shows Japanese leaves at Agostina Segatori's café and shares this discovery with his friends.
Three Japaneseeries
He painted the courtesan after Eisen and two compositions after Hiroshige.
Watch "with a Japanese eye"
Provence seems to him as clear and colorful as Japan imagined through prints.
Preserve /transform
What Van Gogh learns from Hiroshige - and what he refuses to leave intact
The picture becomes clearer when we distinguish assumed borrowing from pictorial transformation.
| Element | Hiroshige's | Van Gogh's | Lesson learned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Framing | Monumental trunk cut by the edges. | Structure taken up almost without modification. | A subject can be fragmented and remain more powerful than if shown in full. |
| Space | Superimposed shots, reduced depth, tiny figures. | Same organization, made more compact by oil. | Depth requires neither central perspective nor academic modeling. |
| Color | Gradations printed with red, white and blue-green. | Denser reds, more frank greens, complementary oppositions. | Color can build space and emotion without copying local color. |
| Outline | Clean lines from drawing and wood engraving. | Thickened, colored, sometimes irregular contours. | The line is not only used to enclose the form: it has its own energy. |
| Surface | Flat and controlled prints. | Visible touch and raised flowers. | A decorative pattern can become tactile without losing its readability. |
| Border | Cartridges integrated into the sheet, without side orange frame. | Added bands and characters borrowed from other prints. | The frame can participate in the composition and transform the painting into an object. |
Around the work
Four images to follow Van Gogh's Japonism
The Plum tree not an isolated episode. It is placed between direct copies of 1887 and compositions where Japanese prints become an interior vocabulary.
Bridge in the rain
Another Hiroshige print enlarged, intensified and surrounded by borrowed characters.
The Courtesan
Van Gogh starts from a published reproduction and surrounds it with a decorative world populated by cranes and frogs.
Father Tanguy
Prints are no longer a single model: they become the mental and colorful environment of the portrait.
The print in the workshop
In the self-portrait with a bandaged ear, a Japanese print remains visible behind the artist who has returned to work.
In front of the work
A look route in four minutes
Whether you're watching the original in Amsterdam or a reproduction, this sequence helps understand the transformation without narrowing the painting down to a list of influences.
Start with the trunk
Follow the diagonal from bottom to top. It divides the surface while connecting the different planes.
Walk away
At a distance, red and green clash like two large masses. The flowers become points of light.
Return to the edges
Orange stripes prevent the image from closing. They announce the decorative taste of many works from Arles.
Compare without looking for a winner
Hiroshige is not a primitive step and Van Gogh an improvement: they are two visual systems with different means.
The Shop
Bring together the model and its translation
The most instructive connection is to show Van Gogh and Hiroshige in the same room. Two vertical formats create a diptych where the gaze moves from the printed flat to the painted material.
Plum tree in bloom, after Hiroshige
Van Gogh's version, with its deep red, dense green and fully visible orange borders.
Choose the format →The Plum Garden in Kameido
The 1857 model: spectacular framing, delicate gradations and depth constructed by plans.
See print →Bridge in the rain
The engraved rain becomes a network of painted lines and saturated colors.
Discover →Oiran, the Courtesan
A vertical figure surrounded by patterns and decorative colors.
Discover →Portrait of Father Tanguy
A modern portrait posed in front of a veritable mosaic of prints.
Discover →Continue reading
From the Japan of Paris to the orchards of Arles
These articles directly extend the questions of framing, color and circulation of models.
Frequently asked questions
Understand everything about the Plum tree in bloom
Title, date, model, Japanese characters and place of conservation: the essential answers at a glance.
What is the exact title of Van Gogh's painting?
The Van Gogh Museum uses the English title Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige). In French, we meet Plum tree in bloom after Hiroshige, Plum trees in bloom or Japanese: plum tree in bloom.
When did Van Gogh paint the Plum Tree in Flowers?
He painted it in Paris in October-November 1887, at the same time as the Rain bridge after Hiroshige.
What work by Hiroshige Van Gogh does he copy?
He works from The Kameido Plum Residence, print from 1857 belonging to the One hundred famous views of Edo.
Did Van Gogh own the original print?
Yes. The Van Gogh Museum notice states that he painted from an engraving from his own collection, created with his brother Theo.
Why does the painting have Japanese characters?
Van Gogh adds two orange borders with characters for their decorative and exotic effect. They do not serve as a legend faithful to the landscape.
What does Van Gogh change from Hiroshige?
It intensifies the colors, transforms the black and gray of the trunk into reds and blues, makes the material visible and adds the side borders.
Where to see the painting today?
The painting belongs to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, under object number s0115V1962. Its presence in the rooms may vary depending on loans and hangings.
Why talk about learning through copying?
Because Van Gogh deliberately takes up the structure of the print in order to study its framing, its flat areas, its contours and its construction of space, before translating them into his own pictorial language.
Verified sources
Notices of works and correspondence
The dates, dimensions, references and elements of factual interpretation are based primarily on the institutions which preserve the works and the scientific edition of the letters.
Van Gogh Museum
Complete instructions: date, dimensions, F/JH, origin and comparison with Hiroshige.
Source printHiroshige in Kameido
Notice of the print kept in the Japanese collection of the Van Gogh Museum.
CorrespondenceLetter 587 to Émile Bernard
Van Gogh compares the clarity and colorful effects of Arles to Japanese prints.
Parisian contextTambourine exhibition
Notes from the scientific edition on the Japanese print exhibition organized in 1887.
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