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View of La Crau from Montmajour, 1888
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Around Arles — Montmajour — The Ruins of the Abbey, around 1900 © Reproduction Benjamin Gavaudo / CMN
Van Gogh contrasts a steam train with a horse-drawn carriage in this sweeping panorama across the plain of La Crau. The vista recalls the pivotal scene in Zola’s The Sin of Abbé Mouret when the priest's amnesia lifts as he sees the landscape below Le Paradou dotted with people living ordinary lives. Van Gogh considered this the last drawing of the Montmajour series and among ‘the best I’ve done with my pen’.
Pen and reed pen on paper
The British Museum. César Mange de Hauke Bequest, 1968,0210.20