The Ravine of the Peyroulets

It is part of a large series of paintings created during a time of extraordinary creative activity for the artist in the last year of his life, after he had committed himself to the Saint-Paul Asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

It was painted in late autumn, and Van Gogh wrote to his friend Émile Bernard: "Such subjects certainly have a fine melancholy, but then it is fun to work in rather wild places, where one has to dig one's easel in between the stones lest the wind should blow the whole caboodle over.

"[1] The following spring Van Gogh sent it to Paris, where Paul Gauguin admired the painting and responded saying: "In subjects from nature you are the only one who thinks.

Two travelers, very small, seem to be climbing there in search of the unknown…Here and there, red touches like lights, the whole in a violet tone.

[3] The work is now in the permanent collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, most recently displayed at Gallery 244, "Dutch and Flemish Art".

The Gorge "Les Peiroulets" , Another version of painting, December 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum , (F661) [ 5 ]