Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun — Vincent van Gogh, 1889

One of the olive grove canvases Van Gogh painted around Saint-Rémy in late 1889, written about in his letters as a deliberate counterpart to his cypress series. The yellow sky and disk of the sun stand as much for an idea — heat as a kind of fact — as for a particular afternoon. The postcard carries that charged light into a hand-held note or a small framed display. From the Vincent van Gogh collection.