Mountains at Saint-Rémy

Mountains at Saint-Rémy was painted in July 1889, one of the first landscapes Van Gogh executed after arriving at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. The Alpilles — a chain of sharp limestone ridges — rose dramatically just beyond the asylum walls and presented Van Gogh with a landscape utterly unlike anything he had painted before. In this early engagement with the mountains, he was still finding his way into the subject, responding to the piled, rugged forms of the Provençal limestone with the swirling, compressed brushwork he was developing at Saint-Rémy. The work is now in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Van Gogh builds the mountain mass from swirling, interlocking strokes that give the rock an almost geological dynamism. The olive trees in the foreground are treated with even greater torsional energy, their twisted forms echoed in the turbulent mark-making throughout the rest of the composition.