Corridor in the asylum

Corridor in the asylum: Vincent van Gogh

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - Corridor in the asylum

Keywords: Corridor, asylum

Work Overview: Corridor in the asylum
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1889; Saint-rémy-de-provence, France *
Style: Post-Impressionism
Genre: interior
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 47.5 x 61 cm
Location: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, NY, US

A long hallway stretches almost all the way to the end of the viewer's perspective. One solitary figure about halfway down the hall makes a quick exit from our view as it ducks into an abutting room. The hallway is colored in somber tones--browns, greens, and muddy yellows make up most of the coloration. These colors make the hallway appear as though it is composed of awkward rivers flowing across the plane of the floor, suggesting a sort of moat or barricade across which travel might be difficult. Additionally, the archways are not stylistically consistent--the arch closest to the viewer is more plain, more bleak, and seems to cordon off the viewer's end of the hall from the remainder of the corridor.

A Corridor in the Asylum (1889) depicts the asylum in St. Rémy, where Van Gogh spent a year towards the end of his life. The picture evokes feelings of loneliness and separation, evinced most effectively by the one tiny figure glimpsed in the distance.

This sad and lonesome depiction of a care-taking facility invites the viewer to think about the influence of a patient's physical environment on his or her mental health. How important is company and camaraderie for the healing process? Environments are evocative.

This haunting view of a sharply receding corridor is the artist's most powerful depiction of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in St. Rémy, where he spent twelve months near the end of his life and where he painted the Museum's oils of olive groves, cypresses, roses, and irises ("Women Picking Olives" (1995.535.44); "Olive Orchard" (1998.325.1); "Cypresses" (49.30); "Wheat Field with Cypresses" (1993.132); "Irises" (58.187); "Vase of Roses" (1993.400.5)). The buildings (largely remains of a twelfth-century monastery) were divided into men's and women's wards, but most of the small cells looking out on the neglected garden were empty when Van Gogh was there. One of the rooms he was able to use as a studio.

The artist sent this unusually large and colorful drawing to his brother Theo, to give a picture of his surroundings.

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