1889 · Saint-Rémy-de-Provence · Knot of Motif

The Hospital Garden

After his range became smaller, he looked at that small place more thoroughly.

F659 The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital 1889
F660 The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital (Essen) 1889
F734 The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital (May) 1889

Synaesthetic Precision

The same garden under his brush has four seasons and four conditions of seeing. Spring's garden is fresh green and violet iris, summer's is dark green and orange, autumn's turns toward ochre and black pine; he painted less in winter, though he sometimes mentioned it. He was not turning illness into landscape, but continuing to identify colour, direction, and light within a restricted range. Synaesthetic precision here is not a medical instrument; it is a method that lets the work keep happening.

The Colour Experimenter

"Large pines, tall and unkempt grass, various weeds." The garden he describes is the neglected, untended, wild kind. Inside this wildness he ran colour experiments: pine green against grass green, violet shadow against orange sun, ochre soil against cobalt sky. A neglected garden was a better laboratory than a flower bed — the colours of unmanaged places are more complex, more irregular, harder to handle. The colour experimenter preferred wild places.

Painting

These three paintings show different views of the same hospital garden, not three details of one canvas. In F734 a path curves from the building at left into flowering trees. F660 and F659 are horizontal views: bent pines fill the foreground, while paths, benches and figures appear between the trunks. Their compositions and colours differ, but those differences alone do not establish the painter's mental state.
One less noticed work on paper, *Corridor in the Asylum* (F1529), writes constraint into its material. Long taken for gouache, technical examination identifies diluted oil paint; oil seepage on the verso fluoresces yellow under ultraviolet light. With supplies greatly depleted, he used the oil paint at hand to keep working on paper. Its pink Ingres paper absorbed excess oil, helping the paint take on the matte appearance of gouache.

Letter

1889. "The garden of the asylum is very beautiful — there are magnificent trees." Another: "I see the gardens of the asylum through the iron window of my room." A third: "The garden is planted with large pines beneath which grows tall and unkempt grass, mixed with various weeds." The three sentences map his three positions inside the asylum: distant view (the iron window), entry (allowed out of the ward), close view (sitting under the trees, looking carefully).

Place

Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a former monastery outside Saint-Rémy. He committed himself voluntarily — no one sent him; he signed the register in his own hand. Dr. Peyron ran it; half the rooms stood empty. Twice a week he was let out as far as the wheat and the olives; the rest of the week the garden was the entire reachable world. He stayed exactly twelve months. After leaving here, he went to Auvers.

Synaesthetic Precision

The Colour Experimenter

before

He committed himself to Saint-Rémy of his own will, knowing his range would be restricted, but feeling this was better than staying in Arles under everyone's watch.

now

The range he could move in was the garden and the nearby fields. He accepted the restriction as a condition, and then began to paint every corner of the garden, painting whatever he saw.

after

He stayed here a year and a week, suffered several attacks, and also kept working between the attacks. He did not explain how those two things could coexist.

Events

1889-05 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 777
'I see the gardens of the asylum through the iron window of my room.' Observation phase one: distant view
c. 1889-05 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 776
'The garden of the asylum is very beautiful — there are magnificent trees.' Observation phase two: granted entry
1889-05 The Colour Experimenter
The May hospital-garden painting F734: a path beside the building leads into flowering trees.
1889-06 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 784
'The garden is planted with large pines beneath which grows tall and unkempt grass, mixed with various weeds.' Observation phase three: sitting close, looking carefully
c. 1889-11-03 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 816
By 3 November at the latest, Van Gogh had mentioned the horizontal garden painting F660 in a letter. Pines, benches, figures and the building at right take a new arrangement.

From the Letters

Le jardin de l'asile est très beau — il y a des arbres magnifiques.

The garden of the asylum is very beautiful — there are magnificent trees.

Letter 776

Je vois les jardins de l'asile à travers la fenêtre de fer de ma chambre.

I see the gardens of the asylum through the iron window of my room.

Letter 777

Le jardin est planté de grands pins sous lesquels pousse de l'herbe haute et mal soignée, mêlée de diverses mauvaises herbes.

The garden is planted with large pines beneath which grows tall and unkempt grass, mixed with various weeds.

Letter 784

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org