蝴蝶与高草地

By the spring of 1890 Van Gogh had spent nearly a year as a voluntary patient at the asylum of Saint-Paul, outside the village of Saint-Remy. For much of it he was confined to the grounds, and he came to love their neglected corners, where, he wrote, the grass grew tall and unkempt among the weeds. Around 4 May he told his brother Theo he had done two canvases of newly cut grass. This is thought to be one of them. There is no sky and no horizon, only the green close up and a few white butterflies, which he tended to use as a sign of hope. Within days he left the asylum for the north. He would be dead by the end of July.