Van Gogh Painted This Famous View 5 More Times

The view from Vincent van Gogh's asylum window captivated him so deeply that he couldn't paint it just once.

While staying at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, van Gogh created "The Starry Night" in 1889. But that iconic swirling sky and distinctive mountain range appeared in dozens of other paintings that most people have never seen.

Van Gogh had checked himself into the asylum in May 1889 after cutting off part of his own ear and struggling with ongoing mental health challenges. Unlike other patients, he received special privileges: a private studio, permission to paint, and the freedom to explore the grounds with supervision.

From his room, he had an unobstructed view of the countryside. The same cypress trees, rolling hills, and oddly shaped mountain ridge show up again and again in his work from this period.

In "Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Paul Hospital," painted early in 1889 before "The Starry Night," the view is nearly identical. The central rolling hill and distinctive mountain ridge are unmistakable precursors to his most famous work.

Just weeks before creating "The Starry Night" in June 1889, van Gogh painted "At the Foot of the Mountains," showing a slightly different perspective with a cloudless sky. A small cottage at the center appears repeatedly in his Saint-Rémy paintings, like a visual bookmark in his artistic journey.

"Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun" captures the same scene at sunrise, bathing the familiar landscape in golden light. Van Gogh painted that same reaper multiple times, constantly studying and revisiting scenes from different angles.

Perhaps most remarkable is "Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background." In a letter to his brother, van Gogh admitted he found olive trees "too beautiful for me to dare paint." At the asylum, he finally found the courage to try.

"The olive trees are very characteristic, and I'm struggling to capture that," he wrote. "It's silver, sometimes more blue, sometimes greenish, bronzed, whitening on ground that is yellow, pink, purplish or orangeish to dull red ochre. But very difficult, very difficult."

By September 1889, he painted "Wheat Field with Cypresses" with a notably lighter palette than his earlier works. Art historians link this shift in color to improvements in his mental health during that time.

Why This Inspires

Seeing van Gogh's repeated attempts at the same view shows an artist refusing to give up on beauty, even during his darkest struggles. Each painting represents not just technical evolution but emotional resilience, a man finding reasons to keep creating when life felt overwhelming.

Today, visitors can tour van Gogh's room at the former asylum and look out the very same window. While some scenery has changed, the landscape remains largely the same, still inspiring people more than 125 years after the artist first tried to capture its magic.