Meadow with yellow flowers

This small canvas was painted in Arles in April 1889, a month when Van Gogh was living in the town hospital. In February a petition from his neighbours had put him there, the police had closed his Yellow House, and his furniture was stored with friends, the Ginoux family, at the Café de la Gare. By April he was allowed out to paint again. At the same time he was arranging, through the local Protestant pastor Frédéric Salles, to move into the asylum at Saint-Rémy, and he left Arles on 8 May. Out of that month comes this close look at a patch of ground, a tangle of grass and yellow flowers seen from just above, with no horizon and no sky.