Vincent van Gogh, in the aftermath of…
May 1889 CE
After his discharge at the end of January 1889 from the hospital in Arles, he is unable to organize his life or set up a new studio.
He resumes painting on his return home, producing a mirror image Self-Portrait with Pipe and Bandaged Ear (1889, private collection), several still lifes—such as The Bedroom (1889, Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Fund), and La Berceuse ("Mme Roulin Rocking a Cradle") (1889; Van Gogh Museum, on loan from Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam).
Several weeks later, he again shows symptoms of mental disturbance severe enough to cause him to be returned to the hospital.
At the end of April 1889, fearful of losing his renewed capacity for work, which he regards as a guarantee of his sanity, he asks to be temporarily shut up in the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, fifteen miles from Arles, in order to be under medical supervision: "I wish to remain shut up as much for my own peace of mind as for other people's." (Source: Van Gogh's Life and Times; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
Images
Vincent van Gogh: Self-Portrait With a Bandaged Ear (1889); oil on canvas 51 × 45 cm (20 × 17.7 ″); Sammlung Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block, Chicago.
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West Europe
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