Trees in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital

Van Gogh painted this inside the walls of an asylum. In 1889 he had admitted himself to Saint-Paul, a former monastery at Saint-Remy in Provence, and for months the garden was most of the world he was allowed. He turned to its old pine trees again and again. In a letter he described exactly what he was after in them: trunks of red ochre, and green foliage he had darkened with a mixture of black, so the heavy mood of the place came through. He said he was trying to hold on to the proud, unchanging character of the pines against the blue, steady things to paint while his own health came and went.