Van Gogh had voluntarily admitted himself to…

May 1889 CE

Van Gogh had voluntarily admitted himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum at Saint-Rémy on May 8, 1889.

Housed in a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole caters to the wealthy and had been less than half full when Van Gogh arrived, allowing him to occupy not only a second-story bedroom but also a ground-floor room for use as a painting studio.

The admitting physician, Dr. Théophile Peyron, notes that van Gogh suffers from "acute mania with hallucinations of sight and hearing."

His doctor initially confines him to the immediate asylum grounds, so van Gogh paints the world as he sees it from his room, deleting the bars that obscure his view.

In the asylum's walled garden he paints irises, lilacs, and ivy-covered trees.

Van Gogh continues to be haunted by recurrent attacks, alternates between moods of calm and despair, and works intermittently.

As he is sometimes without the stamina or confidence to execute original works, he makes interpretations of paintings by Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Millet, his favorite artists.

Relying on his collection of prints, van Gogh translates the black and white reproductions into his own intensely personal color compositions.

He makes more than twenty copies of Millet's peasant scenes, and he reinvents Delacroix's Pieta (1889; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation) in which the bearded Christ bears some resemblance to himself.

After one particularly violent attack, in which he attempts to poison himself by swallowing paint, van Gogh is forced for a time to confine himself to drawing.

The imposed regimen of asylum life gives van Gogh a hard-won stability: "I feel happier here with my work than I could be outside. By staying here a good long time, I shall have learned regular habits and in the long run the result will be more order in my life."

Confined for long periods to his cell or the asylum garden, having no choice of subjects, and realizing that his inspiration has depended on direct observation, van Gogh fights against having to work from memory.

He mutes the vivid, sun-drenched colors of the previous summer and tries to make his painting calmer.

As he represses his excitement, however, he involves himself more imaginatively in the drama of the elements, developing a bolder and more visionary style based on dynamic forms and a vigorous use of line (he often equates line with color).

Eventually allowed to venture farther afield, he paints the wheatfields, olive groves, and cypress trees of the surrounding countryside, as in Yellow Wheat and Cypress (1889, the National Gallery, London).

Other Works from this period include Garden of the Asylum (1889; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam/Vincent van Gogh Foundation), Cypresses (1889, Rogers Fund/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Olive Trees (1889; Minneapolis museum of Arts, Minnesota), Les Alpilles (1889; Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo, The Netherlands), and portraits of doctors. (Source: Van Gogh's Life and Times; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)