Corridor in the Asylum

This 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 completed oil paintings of of olive groves, cypresses, roses, and irises. 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.