The metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly was symbolic to Van Gogh of men and women's capability for transformation.

[3] In a letter to his sister Wil, Van Gogh says that like a grub eats salad roots, unknowing of the transformation that will take it to a beetle, we are not aware of our potential for metamorphosis.

"[3] That hope may have been on Van Gogh's mind when he took in pregnant Sien Hoornik, a prostitute, and her daughter when he lived in The Hague in 1882.

The existence of a painter-butterfly would be played out on the countless celestial bodies which, after death, should be no more inaccessible to us than the black dots on maps that symbolize towns and villages are in our earthly lives.

In a letter to his sister Wilhelmina he writes that he finds to calm down it is best to "look at a blade of grass, the branch of a fir tree, an ear of wheat.

So if you want to do, as the artists do, go look at the red and white poppies with their bluish leaves, their buds soaring on gracefully bent stems.

[10] In tribute to him on his seventieth birthday, Miriam Rothschild expressed her appreciation metaphorically through Van Gogh's painting: "Two white butterflies twirling in freedom and winged delight.

For the gift, of these special white butterflies — along with all your official and unofficial students, past, present and future — Vince Dethier, I tender you my most heartfelt and grateful thanks.

He described the large moth's colors "of amazing distinction, black, grey, cloudy white tinged with carmine or vaguely shading off into olive green.

Although composed of natural motifs, Van Gogh's layering of pattern in Butterflies and Poppies suggests a decorative quality like that of a textile or a screen."

Vincent painted his series, Butterflies, in Arles, southern France where he rented ‘the yellow house’.

[14] In 1888 Van Gogh also worked on a "study of dusty thistles, with an innumerable swarm of white and yellow butterflies," but the painting was lost.