Vincent at Saint-Rémy
VINCENT VAN GOGH spent a year, from May 1889 to May 1890, as a voluntary patient in the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Two days before Christmas 1888, he had cut off part of his left ear. This was in the nearby town of Arles, where Vincent painted many his well-known works including the series of Sunflower paintings, which he painted to decorate the guest room for when his friend Paul Gauguin came to stay. Unfortunately, Gauguin’s visit would culminate in the argument that drove Vincent to cut off his ear. Enjoy a visit to Arles but, if you possibly get the chance, take the road to Saint-Rémy, about 25 km to the north-east. Away to your right you will see the peaks of the Alpilles, in whose foothills Vincent loved to wander and paint the cypresses, the twisted pines and the olive trees.
The streets of Saint-Rémy are treelined and lovely. The tourist information pointed us to Avenue Vincent van Gogh, along which various landmarks display information about his pictures, and at the end of which lies the St Paul Mausoleum and the asylum where Vincent had himself confined. Arriving at the gate, we found that entry was cash-only. I had to run back down the hill into Saint-Rémy to get cash from the car because we had none with us. It was hot running in the sun, but I ran all the way because I wanted as much time as possible.
A long driveway leads to a bronze statue of Vincent, cradling sunflowers and his painting things. The first building we went inside was the church, the mausoleum of St Paul. The altar is like a tomb, the church very empty. To the side were some contemporary sculptures in wood. Then we went through and saw the interior courtyard that Vincent had painted, full of flowers and surrounded by stone colonnades, walls clad in ivy. Up ancient worn stone steps we came to Vincent’s bed room, with a little bed, a barred window looking out over a walled garden, fields, olive groves. The walls told the story of his stay in the asylum. In the room next door, where he stored his paintings, were bathtubs once used for water cures. Vincent had the use of three rooms: his bedroom, a work room and a store room. Accompanied, he was allowed to walk an hour away from the hospital each day in order to paint. Sometimes he worked until he collapsed, then could not work again for many days. The beauty of the cypress trees against the sky, he wrote, made him faint.
A Italian film crew was making a documentary in Vincent’s bedroom, then later around the courtyard. Beneath Vincent’s bedroom window, we wandered the paths at the back of the hospital, where irises flowered and the sun was getting low. We watched the film crew at work, then wandered back down the long drive to go out. There was a path leading towards the Alpinelles, which we took and soon found ourselves in an abandoned quarry, probably the same one Vincent depicted a couple of times. Looking down between the trees, you could see how deep the quarry was, with a path that wound around its sheer edges. We found one path that led down inside, where it was cool and very dark, the walls covered in graffiti, 666 and devil images. An old skeletal bicycle frame stood in the darkness in the limestone cave. It was too dark to see how far inside the hillside the excavation went.
We found a nice place to stay just across the road toward town. The view from the window was very lovely, over trees and flowers, and the room was painted in soft gold yellow. We were tired and Chesky went for a walk.
For dinner, outside under the trees at a table along the path beside a tall hedge, we had fish and creme brûlée, till unaccountably we squabbled, then Chesky went to bed. I stayed for a while at the table. The chef came out and smoked with customers at the table beside me. Later I walked back to gates of the hospital and stood a long while under the pine trees and stars, staring at the closed gates, thinking of Vincent inside the gates, and the great separation of time and spirit that the gates represented, how forty years ago I had driven up to these gates, and how strange it was, forty years later, to return by myself and stand here with the cool night wind and thoughts of Vincent.
