When Vincent van Gogh painted Cypresses and Two Women in 1890, he was living in Auvers-sur-Oise, just weeks before his death. What makes this work especially striking is how it captures Van Gogh’s last, feverish fascination with cypress trees—a motif he called “the dark patch in a sun-drenched landscape” in his letters to his brother Theo. The painting stands as one of the final iterations in a series that began in Saint-Rémy, where Van Gogh wrote of the cypresses: “They are as beautiful in line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk.” This late work, then, is not just a landscape, but a culmination of Van Gogh’s dialogue with nature and his own turbulent mind. In the painting, two women walk along a winding path bordered by towering cypress trees, their forms dwarfed by the swirling, almost animate foliage above.

The cypresses, painted with thick, urgent strokes, dominate the composition, their dark greens and blues contrasting sharply with the lighter sky and earth. The women, rendered in softer, more subdued tones, seem to be passing through a world both familiar and strange—a landscape charged with energy and movement. Unlike the calm, orderly trees of Claude Monet’s landscapes, Van Gogh’s cypresses twist and surge, embodying both shelter and unrest.

The painting captures a moment of passage: the women’s journey beneath the trees becomes a metaphor for life’s fragility beneath forces larger than ourselves. The exact early history of Cypresses and Two Women is unclear, as is the medium Van Gogh used—though oil on canvas is most likely, given his practice at the time. Like many of his late works, it was probably left in the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, Van Gogh’s friend and physician, after the artist’s death in July 1890.

Over the years, the painting has passed through private collections and exhibitions, gaining recognition as a key example of Van Gogh’s late Post-Impressionist style. Today, it stands as a testament to the artist’s restless vision in his final months, its swirling trees and solitary figures echoing the intensity and vulnerability of Van Gogh himself.