Les Grands Platanes (Les Cantonniers à Saint-Rémy)

By the autumn of 1889 Van Gogh had voluntarily committed himself to an asylum outside Saint-Remy, in Provence, after a severe breakdown earlier that year. On a walk through the town he came upon workmen repairing a road beneath a row of enormous plane trees turning yellow, and he painted them at speed. He had run low on proper canvas, so he worked on a length of ordinary printed cloth patterned with small red diamonds. You can still see that pattern showing through in the places he left unpainted. He liked the picture enough to paint a second version of it soon after, now in Washington. This first one stayed apart from its twin and hangs today in Cleveland.