 The autumn work was somewhat in reaction to the recent compositions of Christ in the Garden of Olives by his friends Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard . Frustrated by their work which he qualified with the words " nothing was observed " , Van Gogh painted " in the groves , morning and evening during these clear , cold days , but in beautiful , bright sunshine " resulting in five canvases above the three he completed earlier in the year . He wrote to his brother , Theo , " What I have done is a rather hard and coarse reality beside their abstractions , but it will have a rustic quality and will smell of the earth . " Rather than attempting to recreate what the scene might have been like , he explained " one can express anguish without making reference to the actual Gethsemane , and ... there is no need to portray figures from the Sermon on the Mount in order to express a gentle and comforting feeling . " He also commented : " I shall not paint a Christ in the Garden of Olives , but shall paint the olive harvest as one might see it today , and by giving the human figure its proper place in it , one might perhaps be reminded of it . " 
