Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, The

In May 1889 Van Gogh checked himself into the asylum of Saint-Paul at Saint-Remy, worn down and frightened by his own attacks. For much of the next year the walled garden was most of the world he was allowed, so he painted it, again and again. Here the tall pines rise with reddish trunks, the undergrowth below them a thick tangle of paint. He described the picture to his friend the painter Emile Bernard through its colours, red earth, green dulled with grey, black lines holding the shapes together, a combination that carried, he said, some of the anxiety his fellow patients suffered. He was rarely allowed beyond the walls, and these pines at the garden's edge were near the limit of what he could see.