Almond Blossom was made to celebrate the birth of his nephew and namesake, son of his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo.

Here, he felt, the flattening effect of the sun would strengthen the outlines of compositions and reduce nuances of color to a few vivid contrasts.

Pairs of complements—the red and green of the plants, the woven highlights of oranges and blue in the fence, even the pink clouds that enliven the turquoise sky — almost vibrate against each other.

Hiroshige's Plum Park in Kameido demonstrates portrayal of beautiful subject matter with flat patterns of colors and no shadow.

"[8] The southern region and the flowering trees seem to awaken van Gogh from his doldrums into a state of clear direction, hyper-activity and good cheer.

[9] Vincent wrote to Theo, "Down here it is freezing hard and there is still snow in the countryside," and he has "two small studies of an almond-tree branch already in flower in spite of it."

[11] To reflect the early signs of spring, he used delicate brushstrokes and pastel shades for Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass.

This still life resembles the Japanese art of flower arrangement, ikebana, in its simplicity and evoked hopefulness as well as in its formal use of empty space.

In Almond Tree in Blossom, Vincent used the light, broken strokes of impressionism and the dabs of colour of divisionism for a sparkling surface effect.

I should have greatly preferred him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.

This is a feature that Van Gogh had admired in Japanese floral studies that, for example, may depict a portion of a stalk of bamboo in an empty space.