![]() ![]() Postcard of the road over the Alpilles (around 1905)Ī postcard of around 1905 shows the view. Mountains at Saint-Rémy was painted around ten minutes’ walk from the asylum’s gate, on the road that ran southwards over Les Alpilles. The other white flowers were once pink, but his red pigment has disappeared (fading of Van Gogh’s colours is a widespread problem). Van Gogh duly added several of his beloved sunflowers in the foreground, along with other blooms. In the painting, the lone farmhouse nestles in an olive grove. Rod referred to the homes of mountain dwellers: “Their wooden huts are small and dark, meagre against the terrible cold of their winters”, adding that in their small gardens “sway scarce sunflowers”. He explained to Theo that he had been partly inspired by a passage in a newly published novel by the Swiss-French writer Edouard Rod, Le Sens de la Vie. Vincent wrote to his brother Theo in mid July 1889 about Mountains at Saint-Rémy: “The latest canvas I’ve done is a view of mountains with a darkish hut among olive trees at the bottom.” But for Vincent, they were the highest elevations he had ever seen. Initially he was confined within the asylum’s walls, but a month later he was allowed out for a few hours each day to explore the dramatic landscape-and to paint.Ĭoming from the flat Netherlands, Van Gogh regarded Les Alpilles (the small Alps) as mountains even though, at a height of just under 500m high, they should really be regarded as mere hills. Van Gogh had arrived at the asylum just outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in May 1889, a few months after mutilating his ear in the Yellow House in Arles. In the centre of the artist’s composition he has included a weathered limestone feature known as Les Deux Trous (The Two Holes), a name that aptly describes a crest which has been punctured by rain and wind. Thannhauser, 1978) Photo: Chris Hellier / Alamy Stock Photo Guggenheim Museum, New York (Thannhauser Collection, gift of Justin K. A detail of Van Gogh’s Mountains at Saint-Rémy and a photograph of Les Deux Trous (The Two Holes) Credit: Painting: Solomon R. ![]()
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