Alive
Painted in June 1889. Van Gogh had put himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy the month before. This is the view east from his bedroom, except the bedroom window had iron bars and he was not allowed to work in there. He drew at the window and painted downstairs in the studio, in daylight, from memory. The big white star to the right of the cypress is Venus. He wrote to his brother Theo that he had watched the country from his window a long time before sunrise, with nothing in the sky but the morning star, and that it looked very big. Researchers have since checked the sky over Provence that June, and Venus was close to its brightest. The village underneath is invented. There is no town in that direction, and the church spire is Dutch rather than Provençal. He thought the picture had gone wrong. In November 1889 he wrote to Émile Bernard and called it a failure. He died the following July. The Museum of Modern Art got it in 1941 by trading a dealer 2 Cézannes and a Toulouse-Lautrec for it. The canvas is 73.7 cm by 92.1.
look closer
The big white star is Venus. Van Gogh told Theo he had watched the country before sunrise with nothing out but the morning star, and that it looked very big.