VanGoghdescribed this picture, one of the last he did in the south, in a letter to Gauguin: “A cypress with a star, a last attempt - a night sky with a moon without radiance, the slender crescent barely emerging from the opaque shadow cast by the earth – a star with exaggerated brilliance. Very romantic if you like, but Provence also I think.” Here, in all its virtuosity and controlled effect, is the wonderful brush stroke of these later pictures, tying together pictorial surface and perspective depth, as it unites the flow of the road with the movement of the heavens. The “late wave-farers” are small, but still at home in the spectacle around them, and the single cypress holds its own against the universal panorama.