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Afterlives / Interactive passage

A tree crosses the page.

Why does the painting differ from the print he owned?

1857 / 1887Edo · ParisReview edition
· Vincent van Gogh · 1887Van Gogh Museum / Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain · Source ↗
Image & source

Image record / Public Domain

Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige)

Maker
Vincent van Gogh
Date
1887
Collection
Van Gogh Museum / Wikimedia Commons
Accession
s0115V1962
Credit
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Google Art Project reproduction via Wikimedia Commons; file marked public domain as a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional public-domain work.
Rights
Public Domain

Resized and JPEG compressed. Full composition retained; no recoloring.

Open source record ↗Read image license ↗

An interactive passage / Select a stop

Distinguish the design, the sheet and the painted adaptation.

1857

A design with several states

A title identifies a composition; it does not make every impression interchangeable. Follow the source article’s comparison of print states.

Hiroshige, The Plum Garden at Kameido

documented

Van Gogh’s 1887 Flowering Plum Orchard adapts Hiroshige’s plum-garden design; the British Museum identifies his fourth-state impression and a tracing.

The design, the owned impression, the tracing and the painting are separate entities.

Inspect this connection ↓
Link to this stop ↗

The link preserves this stop and research version. Its social image represents the whole investigation.

Read the complete passage

1857 · A design with several states

A title identifies a composition; it does not make every impression interchangeable. Follow the source article’s comparison of print states.

Evidence: Van Gogh’s 1887 Flowering Plum Orchard adapts Hiroshige’s plum-garden design; the British Museum identifies his fourth-state impression and a tracing.

The intermediary · An owned sheet and a tracing

The museum article identifies an impression and a tracing. These provide more specific evidence than general admiration for Japanese art.

Evidence: Van Gogh’s 1887 Flowering Plum Orchard adapts Hiroshige’s plum-garden design; the British Museum identifies his fourth-state impression and a tracing.

1887 · The frame changes the encounter

Korenberg argues that the painting also resembles an earlier state. The orange border is only the most conspicuous change; inspect the sky, grass and flower centres at the source.

Evidence: Capucine Korenberg argues that the painting also recalls an earlier print state, despite Van Gogh’s owned fourth-state impression and surviving tracing.

Evidence: The Van Gogh Museum identifies the painting’s orange borders and Japanese characters as additions to the borrowed composition.

01 / Close reading

The familiar branch hides a less familiar puzzle.

The thick foreground branch interrupts the orchard before the eye can reach its small figures. In Van Gogh’s painting, it also leads into an orange border filled with Japanese characters. The tree and the added frame compete to decide where the picture ends.

The Van Gogh Museum’s gallery text identifies those borders as additions. But the painting’s differences are not confined to its frame. Capucine Korenberg’s British Museum account argues that its red sky, yellow flower centres and blue shading in the grass recall an earlier print state than the one Van Gogh owned.

Evidence 1: catalogue fact ↓Evidence 2: attributed reference ↓

02 / Historical account

The sheet he owned does not settle the source.

Korenberg identifies Van Gogh’s owned impression as fourth state, with a surviving tracing. Her study of 82 photographed impressions distinguishes four states; eight photographs could not be assigned because their evidence was obscured or inadequate. State identification rests on combinations of details, not simply a red sky.

In the museum article, she proposes that the painting also draws on an earlier impression, perhaps seen in Paris. The particular additional sheet and encounter remain unidentified. The owned print, tracing and painting give us a real chain of objects—and a reason not to imagine that the chain explains every painted choice.

Evidence 1: adaptation ↓Evidence 2: catalogue fact ↓Evidence 3: attributed reference ↓

Keep the identities distinct

Works, people & carriers.

work

Fourth-state impression owned by Vincent van Gogh

19th century

Identified in the museum article; not substituted with an arbitrary impression.

Open the source record ↗

The research stays attached

How we know.

Source verification and prose revised with AI assistance. Independent specialist review remains pending.

Editorial review · 2026-10-17
The print he owned may not explain every detail he painted.

Checked 2026-10-17 · a-tree-crosses-the-page.3

Download the research record ↓
documentedVan Gogh’s 1887 Flowering Plum Orchard adapts Hiroshige’s plum-garden design; the British Museum identifies his fourth-state impression and a tracing.

Relationship: adaptation

Hiroshige, The Plum Garden at Kameido Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige)

The limit: The design, the owned impression, the tracing and the painting are separate entities.

Claim plum-adaptation · research version a-tree-crosses-the-page.3
documentedThe Van Gogh Museum identifies the painting’s orange borders and Japanese characters as additions to the borrowed composition.

Relationship: catalogue fact

The limit: This does not make the characters a verified translation of the print’s original inscriptions.

Claim plum-border · research version a-tree-crosses-the-page.3
attributedCapucine Korenberg argues that the painting also recalls an earlier print state, despite Van Gogh’s owned fourth-state impression and surviving tracing.

Relationship: attributed reference

The limit: This is the researcher’s inference. An additional impression, its owner and a Paris encounter are not established.

Claim plum-earlier-state · research version a-tree-crosses-the-page.3
documentedKorenberg’s 2025 study examined photographs of 82 impressions and distinguished four printing states; eight impressions could not be assigned.

Relationship: catalogue fact

The limit: The study uses surviving impressions and available photographs. A red sky alone does not prove a first state.

Claim plum-four-states · research version a-tree-crosses-the-page.3
Source ledger · 4 records

scholarship · en

Variations in Hiroshige’s Print ‘The Plum Garden at Kameido’ (2025), Heritage 8(2), 74 ↗

Capucine Korenberg

Checked 2026-10-17 · Indexed source text. Relevant indexed primary-source text checked. Direct scripted access was blocked, empty or incomplete; this is not recorded as a successful full-page retrieval.

Locate: Section 3.5, Table 5 and conclusions

Supports: Study of 82 photographed impressions; four states distinguished; eight unassigned. A red sky alone is not sufficient state evidence.

Limit: The photographic sample concerns surviving impressions. The painting’s proposed earlier-state source is an argument in the separate museum article, not a demonstrated additional sheet.

object record · en

Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige) ↗

Van Gogh Museum

Checked 2026-10-17 · Indexed source text. Indexed work identification checked; narrative claims are separately supported by the museum’s gallery-text PDF.

Locate: Painting commentary; collection number s0115V1962

Supports: The 1887 adaptation of Hiroshige and added orange borders with Japanese characters.

Limit: Descriptive interpretation belongs to the museum. A reproduction of another impression must not be labeled as Vincent's own sheet.

institutional account · en

Tracking down the Plum Garden: Hiroshige, Van Gogh and the Edo 'Instagram' ↗

British Museum

Checked 2026-10-17 · Indexed source text. Relevant indexed primary-source text checked. Direct scripted access was blocked, empty or incomplete; this is not recorded as a successful full-page retrieval.

Locate: Discussion and caption identifying the fourth-state impression owned by Van Gogh and his tracing

Supports: A particular print state, a tracing and the 1887 painted adaptation; variation between impressions.

Limit: No claim that every surviving impression is identical. Museum photographs remain external references unless separately cleared.

Public life: reach, response, consequence

Reach. The surviving owned print and tracing establish a specific encounter with the design. No additional gallery encounter is documented.

Response. Korenberg proposes earlier-state features in the painting. This is a research interpretation rather than a new artist statement.

Consequence. The revised case complicates a one-sheet copying story while preserving the documented adaptation and the unresolved intermediary.

Versions & corrections
  • a-tree-crosses-the-page.1 · 2026-10-17

    First source-checked review edition. Historical claims and original readings are distinguished; image permissions are recorded separately.

  • a-tree-crosses-the-page.2 · 2026-10-17

    Recovered the museum article’s earlier-state argument, which the first edition omitted. Added Korenberg’s DOI-linked study, its 82-impression sample and eight unassigned cases. Kept the proposed additional impression and Paris encounter uncertain; checked orange borders against the museum gallery text.

  • a-tree-crosses-the-page.3 · 2026-10-17

    Recovered the museum article’s earlier-state argument, which the first edition omitted. Added Korenberg’s DOI-linked study, its 82-impression sample and eight unassigned cases. Kept the proposed additional impression and Paris encounter uncertain; checked orange borders against the museum gallery text. Bound the final passage stop to the attributed earlier-state inference as well as the border record.

Historical source assertions, editorial readings and image decisions are separate. A revision changes the research version and regenerates dependent summaries and exports.

Suggest a correction →

The story branches

Carry a question forward.

These are editorial reading suggestions. Each investigation makes its own argument.

Follow prints into another setting.

Follow prints into another setting.

Image sources

First Steps ↗
Jean-François Millet · The Cleveland Museum of Art
CC0. In a garden, a kneeling father reaches toward a child supported by a woman. Black chalk and touches of pastel describe figures, plants and a fence.

First Steps, after Millet ↗
Vincent van Gogh · The Metropolitan Museum of Art
CC0. Blue-clothed figures surround a child taking a step in a green garden, with a wheelbarrow at left and a fence behind. Short painted strokes cover the scene.

c. 1859–66
1890

A small gesture, carried forward

What can a photograph carry from one painter to another?

A documented connection

A documented connection

About this connection

The intermediary is documented; its image is not reproduced in this investigation.

Follow the passage

Follow prints into another setting.

Follow prints into another setting.

Image source

Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei) ↗
Katsushika Hokusai · The Metropolitan Museum of Art
CC0. A wave curls over three long boats; Mount Fuji sits small beneath its arc.

ca. 1830–32

A blue that crossed borders.

What if the traveller is a material, rather than a picture?

A connection attributed in the research

A connection attributed in the research

About this connection

This is material context, not the documented supply chain for the particular Met impression displayed here.

Read the visual essay
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