Le Mont Gaussier with the Mas de Saint-Paul

Van Gogh committed himself to the asylum at Saint-Remy on 8 May 1889, and for the first weeks he painted only what he could reach without leaving, the irises in the garden and the walled wheatfield seen through the bars of his window. By June the doctor was letting him work outside the grounds with an attendant, and this is part of what was out there. Mont Gaussier is the rocky peak at the western end of the Alpilles, standing right above the asylum, and the mas is the farm attached to it. This is June 1889, the month of The Starry Night. The same ridge turns up again behind the olive trees in the canvas now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, painted in those same weeks.