Painted from an asylum window at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and one of the most heavily impastoed canvases in regular loan circulation.
Artist
Vincent van Gogh
Date
June 1889
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
73.7 × 92.1 cm
Location
Museum of Modern Art, New York
History
What the record shows
Van Gogh painted the view east from his room at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum shortly before sunrise, adding an idealised village to the composition.
He regarded the work as a failure, describing it in letters to his brother Theo as an exaggeration. It entered the modern canon only decades later.
The thick impasto is structurally fragile: raised paint ridges are vulnerable to abrasion and vibration, so transport requires cavity packing that never contacts the paint surface.
Provenance
Chain of ownership
01Theo van Gogh, Paris, 1889
02Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, 1891
03Émile Schuffenecker; Rosenberg, Paris
04Georgette P. van Stolk, Rotterdam
05Paul Rosenberg, New York
06Museum of Modern Art, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, 1941
