Living in the asylum in Saint-R้my, van Gogh repeatedly turned his attention to the no-man's-land between the wide world out there and his own confined world. When he looked across the low wall that enclosed the asylum, he found a whole world of subjects awaiting him. There was a range of hills, the Alpilles, with countless olive trees at their feet and an occasional solitary cypress crowning them to counteract the gentle ups and downs of the hills with a bold vertical.