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Van Gogh painted this in 1889, the year he checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, just outside Saint-Remy in Provence, after the breakdown in Arles that cost him part of his ear. For long stretches he was not allowed past the walls, so the hospital's overgrown garden became his main subject: the tall pines, the ivy, the stone benches, the flower beds between them. He worked quickly, in thick ropes of paint, turning a quiet enclosed garden into something restless and alive. He stayed a little over a year before leaving for the north of France, where he died a few months later.