Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the context of "Trees and Undergrowth (Van Gogh series)"

Lilac Bush (catalogue number : F 579, JH 1692) is a May 1889 oil on canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh, produced during his stay in Saint-Rémy. It is now in the Hermitage Museum.The artist began painting almost as soon as he had arrived at the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint-Rémy. Among his first subjects were the irises and lilac bush in the hospital garden, mentioned in a letter written to his brother Theo and Theo's wife Johanna a few days after his arrival:

The Monastery of Saint Paul de Mausole (French: monastère Saint-Paul-de-Mausole) is a former Roman Catholic 11th—century Benedictine monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France. It was later administered by the Order of Saint Francis in 1605.

Several rooms of the building have been converted into a museum to honor the famed Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who stayed there in 1889–1890 at a time when the monastery had been converted to a lunatic asylum. Van Gogh created many paintings here, including the well-known The Starry Night.

The Starry Night, often called simply Starry Night, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Described as a "touchstone of modern art", The Starry Night has been regarded as one of the most recognizable paintings in the Western canon.

The painting was created in mid-June 1889, inspired by the view from Van Gogh’s bedroom window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum. The former monastery functioned as a mental asylum, where Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself on 8 May 1889, following a mental breakdown and his infamous act of self-mutilation that occurred in late December 1888. Catering to wealthy patients, the facility was less than half full at the time of Van Gogh's admission, allowing the artist access to both a second-story bedroom and a ground-floor studio. During his year-long stay, he remained highly productive, creating Irises, a self-portrait, and The Starry Night.

Joseph Roumanille (Occitan: Josèp Romanilha; 8 August 1818 – 24 May 1891) was a Provençal poet. He was born at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), and is commonly known in southern France as the father of the Félibrige, for he first conceived the idea of raising his regional language to the dignity of a literary language.