Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Paul Hospital

Van Gogh painted this in June of 1889, a few weeks after he had voluntarily entered the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, just outside the town of Saint-Remy in Provence. He had a small bedroom and a studio there, and at first he worked from the window, looking out over a walled wheatfield. Then the doctors began letting him out under supervision to paint in the countryside beyond, and the low, folded ridge of the Alpilles hills rose straight in front of him. This is among the first things he did with that freedom. The field in the foreground is the enclosed ground of the hospital, and past its wall the bare, rolling stone of the hills fills almost the whole canvas.