Flowering Plum Orchard is the second oil painting selected by Visconti from Van Gogh’s Japanese series The artist made this painting in 1887 from a Japanese print by Hiroshige, called Plum Garden in Kameido The ancient plum tree that was the subject of the original print had the poetic nickname of “the sleeping dragon plum tree” Van Gogh accurately reproduced the composition with more intense colors replacing the black and grey of Hiroshige's tree trunk with red and blue tones He also added the two orange borders with Japanese characters for a decorative and exotic effect.