In the autumn of 1889, Van Gogh painted the ravine near the asylum in the southern French town of Saint‑Remy.
He wrote about it to his dear friend Emile Bernard:
"Such subjects certainly have a fine melancholy, but then it is fun to work in rather wild places, where one has to dig one’s easel in between the stones lest the wind should blow the whole caboodle over".
The following spring, Van Gogh sent this painting to Paris, where Paul Gauguin saw it and wrote to him: