DescriptionThis haunting view of a sharply receding corridor is the artist's most powerful depiction of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in St. Rémy, where he spent twelve months near the end of his life and where he painted the Museum's oils of olive groves, cypresses, roses, and irises ("Women Picking Olives" (1995.535.44); "Olive Orchard" (1998.325.1); "Cypresses" (49.30); "Wheat Field with Cypresses" (1993.132); "Irises" (58.187); "Vase of Roses" (1993.400.5)). The buildings (largely remains of a twelfth-century monastery) were divided into men's and women's wards, but most of the small cells looking out on the neglected garden were empty when Van Gogh was there. One of the rooms he was able to use as a studio.

 

 

The artist sent this unusually large and colorful drawing to his brother Theo, to give a picture of his surroundings.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and MarkingsMarks: [watermark]: AL [in banderole] BAS
Inscriptions: [recto in graphite, lower right]: 14; [verso in pen and ink]: no. 14; [verso inscribed in graphite]: Hospice a St Remy

ProvenanceTheo van Gogh (Dutch, died 1891); Vincent Willem van Gogh (the artist's nephew); Leicester Galleries, London , 1927; Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller (American), New York 1929; Mrs. J. D. Rockefeller (American,); Donor: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Catalogue RaisonneFaille 1529; Hulsker 1808; Pickvance 1986, no. 6