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Mountains at Saint-Rémy, 1889
Taking an actual view as a starting point but choosing not to reproduce it faithfully, Van Gogh painted this highly abstracted landscape using mobile, heavy outlines that he happily acknowledged had little to do with nature. In a further remove from observation, he invented the foreground hut and sunflowers inspired by a scene in Le Sens de la vie (The Meaning of Life), an 1889 novel by Edouard Rod (1857-1910).
Oil on canvas
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978