Van Gogh was not fantasising when he painted mountain landscapes with ‘The Two Holes’ - The Art Newspaper - International art news and events

The asylum where Van Gogh lived in 1889-90 is set among some of the most beautiful scenery of Provence, just beneath Les Alpilles (the little Alps). Only three kilometres away is a soaring limestone crest, known as Le Rocher des Deux Trous (The Rock of the Two Holes). It has a skull-like appearance, pierced with eye sockets. The larger hole is nearly 3m high, the smaller one around half that.

Van Gogh included the Deux Trous in a pair of his landscapes, but because it is such an unexpected feature it has often been seized upon as evidence of the artist’s fragile mental state—the product of an overblown imagination.