This is a very late van Gogh. Vincent painted it sometime after he arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 21, 1890, but before the chestnut trees had stopped flowering. Here he had broken a few blooming chestnut branches off and arranged them in a vase with some light pink rhododendrons. The resultant painting is bold in composition, color and brushwork, yet fragile in its subject matter.
Vincent presented this as a gift to Paul Gachet (1828-1909), the homeopathic physician with whom he was staying. The artist had specifically come to Auvers-sur-Oise on the advice of his brother, Theo, to receive treatment from Gachet. Unfortunately, van Gogh soon doubted that even the artistic, artist-friendly Gachet would be of any help and wrote as much to Theo. And by the end of July, a scant two months later, he was gone.
About the Theft:
At around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 10, 2008, three thieves wearing dark clothing and ski masks entered the E. G. Bührle Collection on the shores of Lake Zurich in Switzerland shortly before the facility was due to close for the day at 5:00 p.m. While one thief ordered visitors and staff, at gunpoint, to lay on the floor, the other two quickly stripped four side-by-side Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from a wall in the "Music Room." Law enforcement officials speculate that these canvases were not stolen "to order," due to the fact that they were hanging together when taken, and also because more valuable works are on display elsewhere in the Collection. $91K (US) in reward money leading to the return of these paintings is reported to be available.
Update: (February 21, 2008) INTERPOL officially announced today that two of the stolen paintings were recovered on February 18. Claude Monet's Poppies near Vétheuil (ca. 1880) and Vincent van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Branches (1890) were discovered in the back seat of a white Opel Omega parked in a lot in front of the Burghölzli, Zurich University's psychiatric clinic--about 2,300 feet away from the Bührle Collection villa. Both works were undamaged. The Cézanne and Degas canvases remain missing.