A Road at Saint-Remy with Female Figure

A Road at Saint-Rémy with Female Figure (1889) is one of Van Gogh's asylum paintings — made during his year of voluntary confinement at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, where the landscape of olive trees, wheat fields, and ancient roads provided inexhaustible subject matter. The female figure — unusual in the largely unpopulated Saint-Rémy landscapes — gives the road a human scale and narrative suggestion. The Kasama Nichidō Museum in Japan holds this work, reflecting the deep Japanese connection to Van Gogh's art — the country whose woodblock prints had influenced him most profoundly was also among the first to recognize and collect his greatness.

Van Gogh builds the Provençal road in his characteristic Saint-Rémy technique — heavily worked impasto, swirling directional strokes in the sky and surrounding vegetation, the road itself rendered in warm ochres and yellows. The figure is more simply painted, providing a still point in the energized landscape.