Jar of Olives by DELILAh
A small canvas of olives in a jar sits in a very long tradition. For thousands of years the olive has been painted, carved and mythologised — at once a humble still-life object and one of the West’s oldest symbols of peace, victory and plenty.
An olive is a quietly difficult thing to paint: small, glossy, and coloured somewhere between green, black and purple with a waxy sheen that catches the light. That challenge is exactly why painters keep returning to it. A jar of olives, a dish of them on a table, a branch against the sky — these are modest subjects that ask real skill, and they carry a weight of meaning that reaches back to antiquity.
The olive as symbol
Long before it was a still-life prop, the olive was a symbol. In the ancient Mediterranean it stood for peace, victory and divine favour: the olive branch as a token of truce, the wreath of wild olive crowning victors at the ancient Olympic Games, the oil anointing kings and athletes. That symbolism soaked into Western art and never really left — when a painter places an olive branch in a scene, it usually means more than foliage. The dove returning with an olive branch is among the most enduring images in the whole Western tradition.
Van Gogh and the living grove
The most famous olive paintings belong to Vincent van Gogh, who painted a remarkable series of olive groves in Provence around 1889, near Saint-Remy. He was fascinated and frustrated by them — the twisting trunks, the restless silver-green leaves flickering against ochre earth and blue hills. For him the groves were almost a spiritual subject, a living counterpart to his cypresses and wheatfields. Those canvases did as much as anything to fix the olive tree in the modern imagination as an emblem of the Mediterranean south.
Why the olive is hard to paint
Here is the practical heart of it, and the reason a good olive painting is more impressive than it looks. The fruit has no single colour — it shifts from green to violet to near-black — and its surface is at once matte and glossy, so it reads wrong if you paint it flat. The foliage is worse: olive leaves are green on top and silvery beneath, so a grove shimmers and changes with every breath of wind, which is precisely what defeated and delighted Van Gogh. To paint an olive convincingly is to solve a small problem of light — and that is why the humble subject has never gone out of fashion.
| In antiquity | Symbol of peace, victory and divine favour |
|---|---|
| Classic image | The dove and olive branch; the victor’s wreath |
| Still-life role | A humble, skill-testing table subject |
| Great champion | Van Gogh’s Provence olive groves, around 1889 |
| The colour | Green to violet to black, matte yet glossy |
| The foliage | Green above, silver beneath — it shimmers |
| Why it endures | A modest subject that demands real craft |
Looking at olives in art
- Read an olive branch in a painting as a symbol — usually peace or victory.
- Seek out Van Gogh’s olive groves to see the tree painted as a living force.
- Notice the colour shifts — a good painter never makes an olive one flat green.
- Watch the leaves: the silver undersides are what make a grove shimmer.
- Respect the humble still life — a convincing jar of olives is hard-won.
Olives in art: common questions
Why are olives a common subject in art?
Because they are both a humble, skill-testing still-life object and an ancient symbol of peace and plenty — modest to depict, yet rich in meaning.
What does an olive branch symbolise?
Chiefly peace, and also victory and divine favour — from the dove returning with an olive branch to the wild-olive wreath crowning victors in the ancient Olympics.
Did Van Gogh paint olive trees?
Yes — he made a celebrated series of olive-grove paintings in Provence around 1889, near Saint-Remy, fascinated by their twisting trunks and shimmering silver-green leaves.
Why are olives hard to paint?
The fruit has no single colour, shifting from green to violet to black, with a surface both matte and glossy; and olive leaves are green above and silver below, so a grove shimmers constantly.
Are olives still painted today?
Yes. The olive remains a favourite of still-life and landscape painters — a small, familiar subject that quietly tests a painter’s handling of colour and light.
People smile at a little jar-of-olives painting as if it were a trifle, but painting an olive well is genuinely hard — the fruit is never one colour, and the leaves flip green to silver with the wind. That is what tormented Van Gogh in his Provence groves, and what makes his olive canvases so alive. My advice : next time you see olives in a painting, look twice. If the artist has caught that shifting green-to-black gloss and the shimmer of the leaves, they have solved a real problem of light — and if an olive branch turns up in a scene, it is almost always saying something about peace.
General cultural background on the olive as a symbol (peace, victory) in Western art, and on Van Gogh’s Provence olive-grove series of around 1889; described qualitatively.