The Stone Bench in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital

By November 1889 Van Gogh had been living inside the Saint-Paul asylum at Saint-Remy for half a year, admitted at his own request after the breakdown in Arles. Between his attacks he was calm and allowed to paint, and on the quiet days the walled garden was most of the world he could reach. This is one corner of it, an empty stone bench under the trees, the kind of ordinary spot a patient passes a dozen times a day. He worked the autumn foliage in short curling strokes and let the bench sit plainly in the middle of it all. He would leave the asylum the following spring, with less than a year left to live.