IV.

Southern France

In 1888 van Gogh left Paris for Arles in southern France. There, under the burning sun of Provence, he painted scenes of the fields, cypress trees, peasants, and rustic life characteristic of the region. During this period, he began to use the swirling brush strokes and intense yellows, greens, and blues associated with such typical works as The Postman Roulin (1888, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and his Bedroom at Arles (1888-1889, versions in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; and Art Institute of Chicago). For van Gogh all visible phenomena, whether he painted or drew them, seemed to be endowed with a physical and spiritual vitality.

In his enthusiasm van Gogh wanted to form a community of artists, and in late 1888 he persuaded Gauguin to leave Brittany in northern France and join him in Arles. After less than two months they began to have violent disagreements, culminating in a quarrel in which van Gogh wildly threatened Gauguin with a razor; the same night, in deep remorse, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear. This was the first serious sign of mental illness. Although Gauguin left Arles, the two remained in touch.

For a time Van Gogh was in a hospital at Arles. He then voluntarily entered the nearby asylum of Saint-Rémy. During his year there, periods of clarity and intense artistic activity alternated with spells of depression and inertia. The paintings of this time include landscapes of cypresses and olive trees and still lifes of flowers. His torment is expressed in the writhing forms of many of his paintings from this period, such as A Wheatfield, with Cypresses (1889, National Gallery, London) and Starry Night (1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York City).

Van Gogh spent the last three months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, under the care of a sympathetic doctor with an interest in art, Paul Gachet, whose portrait he painted (Dr. Gachet, 1890, Louvre, Paris). As he had done throughout his life, van Gogh depicted his surroundings, as shown in paintings of the village church and landscapes of wheatfields. The brooding, ominous atmosphere of van Gogh’s last painting, Crows in a Wheatfield (1890, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh), is considered a reflection of the artist’s disturbed state of mind at the end of his life. Soon after finishing it, van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, and died two days later.