Painted in a small cell in an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, Vincent Van Gogh's magisterial "Starry Night" (1889) is perhaps the most celebrated of the many paintings that chart his compressed and compelling career. The hospital of St. Paul-de-Mausole, at one time a medieval French monastery, offered the Dutch artist a refuge after the crushing disappointments of bleak months spent in nearby Arles. Van Gogh (1853-1890) had been abandoned in Arles by his fellow painter, Paul Gauguin. His ambition of founding a studio in the South of France had collapsed, and with it his dream of a utopian brotherhood of modern painters who shared his belief that art could offer an embodiment of hope amid the drudgeries of modern life.
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