The Entrance Hall of Saint Paul Hospital

The Entrance Hall of Saint Paul Hospital: Vincent van Gogh

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - The Entrance Hall of Saint Paul Hospital

Keywords: Entrance, Hall, Saint, Paul, Hospital

Work Overview: The Entrance Hall of Saint-Paul Hospital
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1889; Saint-rémy-de-provence, France *
Style: Post-Impressionism
Genre: interior
Media: chalk, oil, canvas
Dimensions: 61.6 x 47.1 cm
Location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémy is a collection of paintings that Vincent van Gogh did when he was a self-admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, since renamed the Clinique Van Gogh, from May 1889 until May 1890. During much of his stay there he was confined to the grounds of the asylum, and he made paintings of the garden, the enclosed wheat field that he could see outside his room and a few portraits of individuals at the asylum. During his stay at Saint-Paul asylum, Van Gogh experienced periods of illness when he could not paint. When he was able to resume, painting provided solace and meaning for him. Nature seemed especially meaningful to him, trees, the landscape, even caterpillars as representative of the opportunity for transformation and budding flowers symbolizing the cycle of life. One of the more recognizable works of this period is The Irises. Works of the interior of the hospital convey the isolation and sadness that he felt. From the window of his cell he saw an enclosed wheat field, the subject of many paintings made from his room. He was able to make but a few portraits while at Saint-Paul.

The view down the hallway of many arches is one of profound solitude. The use of contrasts creates greater tension. A lone person in the corridor appears lost, similar to the way Van Gogh was feeling. In March 1889 Van Gogh wrote to his brother that a signed petition from his neighbors [in Arles] designated him as unfit to live freely, "shut up for long days under lock and key and without warders in the isolation cell, without my culpability being proven or even provable."[17]

In a letter to Theo in May 1889 he explains the sounds that travel through the quiet-seeming halls, "There is someone here who has been shouting and talking like me all the time for a fortnight. He thinks he hears voices and words in the echoes of the corridors, probably because the auditory nerve is diseased and over-sensitive, and in my case it was both sight and hearing at the same time, which is usual at the onset of epilepsy, according to what Dr. Félix Rey said one day."

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