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Van Gogh painted this in the first days of January 1889, in Arles, just after coming out of hospital. Two weeks earlier he had cut off part of his own ear during a breakdown, and this quiet still life was, in his own words, a way to get used to painting again. So he laid out the ordinary things on his table and studied them: a blue enamel coffee pot, a plate of sprouting onions, his pipe and tobacco, a lit candle, an empty bottle, a letter from his brother Theo, and a well-thumbed health manual, the Annuaire de la Santé. A few months later, when he left Arles for the asylum at Saint-Rémy, he gave the painting to friends in the town.