Ravine with a Small Stream

In the autumn of 1889 Van Gogh was a voluntary patient at the asylum of Saint-Remy, in the south of France, and on his better days he was allowed out to paint. That October he walked up into the low Alpilles hills and found this ravine, called Les Peiroulets, where a stream had cut a rocky gorge over centuries. He worked it in short, driving strokes, the water running white and foaming, as he put it, like soapsuds between the rocks. Two small figures pick their way along the path. The heavy, twisting brushwork here is the same restless handling he was giving the cypresses and hills around the asylum that year.