Landscape in the Neighbourhood of Saint-Rémy

In the winter of 1889 Van Gogh was living inside the asylum of Saint-Paul, just outside Saint-Rémy, where he had committed himself after the breakdown in Arles. When his health allowed it, an attendant walked him out into the fields and low hills around the walls, and he painted what he saw there. This is one of those excursions: the broken country near the asylum, worked in the short cold light of December. He would leave Saint-Rémy the following spring for the north, and had less than a year to live. The painting itself has been missing since 1989, when it was stolen, so today it is known only from photographs.