Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital with Figure, The

In May 1889 Van Gogh admitted himself, of his own will, to an asylum outside the town of Saint-Rémy in Provence, a few months after the breakdown in Arles when he cut his ear. The place was a former monastery called Saint-Paul, with a walled garden he was allowed to paint. This is that garden: pines with peeling trunks, autumn undergrowth, a single small figure on the path. He worked from what he could see within the grounds, since he could not always go beyond them. The curling, ropey strokes in the foliage and the tree bark are not a manner he put on for effect. They are how he painted through the year he spent there, turning out a canvas nearly every day the light and his health allowed.