The iconic composition represents Van Gogh ushering in modern painting’s radical embrace of sentiment, expression, and mood. The image was inspired by the view from his room in Mausole Hospital in southern France, where he spent 1889-90 recovering from mental illness. Van Gogh also used his imagination and memory to paint the composition, which he didn’t usually do. The brushstrokes for the sky swirl and dance around the cypress tree and the curve of its branches. The effect is ethereal as if Van Gogh recounted a dream on the canvas. The painting currently resides in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.