Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890) 

On 27 July, Vincent went into the fields to paint, as he did every day, but this time things ended differently. He attempted to kill himself. He returned to Auberge Ravoux that evening with a gunshot wound to the chest and stumbled toward his room. Mr Ravoux notified a doctor and remained with Vincent until his brother could get there from Paris. Vincent died on 29 July in room five of the hotel with Theo by his side. His body was placed on a bier downstairs in the painters’ room until the burial on 30 July. Artist friends who had come from Paris hung his paintings in the room.

It is uncertain just which painting was the last he worked on or finished but the next two are certainly among the possible candidates.

Wheat Field with Crows

Auvers-sur-Oise: July, 1890


Oil on canvas

50.5 x 103.0 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum 

 

Field with Wheat Stacks

Auvers-sur-Oise: July, 1890


Oil on canvas

50.0 x 100.0 cm. 


Riehen/Basel, Switzerland: Fondation Beyeler

 

 

 

Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890)

In the last weeks of his life, Van Gogh completed a number of impressive paintings of the wheatfields around Auvers. This outspread field under a dark sky is one of them.

In these landscapes he tried to express 'sadness, extreme loneliness'. But the overwhelming emotions that Van Gogh experienced in nature were also positive. He wrote to his brother Theo, “I’d almost believe that these canvases will tell you what I can't say in words, what I consider healthy and fortifying about the countryside.”

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let898/letter.html

The elongated format of Wheatfields under Thunderclouds is unusual. It emphasizes the grandeur of the landscape, as does the simple composition: two horizontal planes.

 

Wheatfield under Thunderclouds

Auvers-sur-Oise: July, 1890 


Oil on canvas

50.0 x101.0 cm.

Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0106V1962 


Wheat Fields at Auvers Under Clouded Sky

Auvers-sur-Oise: July, 1890 


Oil on canvas

73.0 x 92.0 cm. 


Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art

https://collection.cmoa.org/objects/3c5512b1-e195-4b77-9671-f8c1e73e9b25

Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890) 

Wheatfield at Auvers with White House is a simple painting of a field of wheat with a country house in the background painted by Vincent Van Gogh. The colour and composition reveals a resurgence of spirit – returning are the lush greens of nature.

Wheat Field at Auvers with White House

Auvers-sur-Oise: June, 1890


Oil on canvas  

48.6 x 83.2 cm.


Washington: The Phillips Collection

https://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/house-auvers

Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890) 

Completed in June 1890, Undergrowth with Two Figures is one of the final artworks Van Gogh painted before his death. A rhythmic pattern of thick brushstrokes animates the surface of this painting, and trees in rows recess toward the dark background, making the couple seem trapped by the dense vegetation. Van Gogh described the scene in a letter to his brother Theo, dated June 30, 1890, as “violet trunks of poplars which cross the landscape perpendicularly like columns. The depths of the undergrowth are blue, and under the big trunks the flowery meadow, white, pink, yellow, green, long russet grasses and flowers.”

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let896/letter.html

Undergrowth with Two Figures
Auvers-sur-Oise: June, 1890


Oil on canvas
50.0 x 100.5 cm. 


Cincinnati: The Cincinnati Art Museum
https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/vangogh

Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890)

 Vincent would delight in his exploration of Auvers-sur-Oise and in June he would write to Theo and Jo "I’ve done two studies of houses in the greenery". It's uncertain if Van Gogh was referring specifically to Thatched Cottages at Cordeville (the other candidates being Houses in Auvers). Whatever the case, Van Gogh's enthusiasm for the subject is clear and he undertook the painting of this cottage in Cordeville, a small hamlet near Auvers, with great passion.

 
https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let881/letter.html

Chaumes de Cordeville à Auvers-sur-Oise (Thatched Cottages at Cordeville)


Auvers-sur-Oise: June, 1890
Oil on canvas
72.0 x 91.0 cm. 


Paris: Musee d'Orsay
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/chaumes-de-cordeville-auvers-sur-oise-754

 Vincent in Auvers sur Oise

(1890) 

 

Vincent was hugely productive in Auvers. In three months, he completed almost seventy paintings. Along with numerous landscapes, he made portraits, including one of Adeline Ravoux, the innkeepers’ 13-year-old daughter. He gave her the work afterward. The Ravouxs later also received the work Auvers Town Hall.

https://www.vangoghroute.com/france/auvers-sur-oise/ravoux-inn/

Farmhouse with Two Figures
Auvers-sur-Oise: May-June, 1890


Oil on canvas
38.0 x 45.0 cm.  
Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0108V1962

Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890) 

On his arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise on 20 May 1890, Vincent rented a room on the second floor of Auberge Ravoux in Place de la Mairie. Dr Gachet had advised him to use the village's other inn, Saint-Aubin in Rue de Pontoise, but at six francs a night, Vincent found it too expensive. Arthur Gustave Ravoux and his wife, Adeline Louise Touillet, charged just three and a half francs per night – still more than Vincent had hoped to pay.

 
https://www.vangoghroute.com/france/auvers-sur-oise/ravoux-inn/

The Auberge is still there and you can visit the room Vincent stayed in.

Ears of Wheat
Auvers-sur-Oise: June, 1890 


Oil on canvas
64.5 x 48.5 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0088V1962

<i>For this painting, Van Gogh must have stood in the middle of a wheatfield. He 'zoomed in' on the plants with their waving leaves and heavy stalks. The green sea of wheat is interrupted by a blue cornflower in the upper left and the pink bindweed in the lower right.

Van Gogh described this decorative painting to his friend, the artist Paul Gauguin, as follows: “nothing more than ears of wheat, green-blue stalks, long, ribbon-like leaves, under a sheen of green and pink; ears of wheat, yellowing slightly, with an edge made pale pink by the dusty manner of flowering.' The colours were supposed to evoke 'the soft rustle of the ears of grain swaying back and forth in the wind.”</I>

Vincent in Auvers sur Oise
(1890) 

In May 1890, Vincent left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer the physician Dr. Paul Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise, and also to Theo. 

 

Gachet was recommended by Camille Pissarro, had treated several other artists, and was himself an amateur artist. Vincent wrote in a letter about his first impression of Gachet : "I’ve seen Dr Gachet, who gave me the impression of being rather eccentric, but his doctor’s experience must keep him balanced himself while combating the nervous ailment from which it seems to me he’s certainly suffering at least as seriously as I am.".

the complete letter: 

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let873/letter.html

Green Wheat Fields

May, 1890


Oil on canvas

73.0 x 93.0 cm. 


Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.163323.html

 

detail

 Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1890) 

Vincent painted the next pic, one of his most famous flower still lifes at the end of his stay in the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy. For him, the painting was mainly a study in colour. He set out to achieve a powerful colour contrast. By placing the purple flowers against a yellow background, he made the decorative forms stand out even more strongly. The irises were originally purple. But as the red pigment has faded, they have turned blue. Van Gogh made two paintings of this bouquet. In the other still life, he contrasted purple and pink with green.

Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background


May, 1890
Oil on canvas
92.0 x 73.5 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0050V1962

Vincent in Saint-Rémy

(1890)

During his Paris period, Vincent already painted a forest in an unusual and original way: not the tall trees and the foliage, but the ground, the base of the trunks and the low vegetation, such as ivy, grass and small plants. During his stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy he again makes this type of ‘close-up’ of a piece of grassland with flowers and the trunks of two pine trees.

He paints with thick and thin lines, solid contours and small circles for the many flowers. The rough bark of the pine trees is rendered almost abstractly, while the grass field with white flowers and the yellow dandelions displays a certain sophistication. By emphasizing the foreground – the trees and the grass – and using a strong diagonal, a powerful spatial effect is created.

He writes to his friend Emile Bernard: ‘I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don’t invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made – but to be untangled – in the real world’.

https://krollermuller.nl/vincent-van-gogh-boomstammen-in-het-gras


Pine Trees and Dandelions in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital


April-May, 1890
Oil on canvas
 72.0 x 90.0 cm.
Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum 

https://krollermuller.nl/vincent-van-gogh-boomstammen-in-het-gras

 <b>Vincent in Saint-Rémy</b>
(1890)
 

Large blossom branches like this against a blue sky were one of Van Gogh’s favourite subjects. Almond trees flower early in the spring making them a symbol of new life. Van Gogh borrowed the subject, the bold outlines and the positioning of the tree in the picture plane from Japanese printmaking.

The painting was a gift for his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo, who had just had a baby son, Vincent Willem. In the letter announcing the new arrival, Theo wrote: ‘As we told you, we’ll name him after you, and I’m making the wish that he may be as determined and as courageous as you.’ Unsurprisingly, it was this work that remained closest to the hearts of the Van Gogh family. Vincent Willem went on to found the Van Gogh Museum.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0176V1962
https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let855/letter.html

Blossoming Almond Tree

February, 1890


Oil on canvas
73.5 x 92.0 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0176V1962

 

Detail
 

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)


Despite the mistral, the strong wind that often blows in the winter in Provence, Vincent still frequently paints outdoors. He seeks to capture the ‘superb effects of pale citron skies, and desolate pines [that] cast their silhouettes’. He writes to his sister Willemien that he is working on a canvas with ‘tall, ravaged pines against a red sunset sky’.
But while writing to her, all kinds of undefinable thoughts occur to him. ‘Upon looking at my canvas I told myself, that’s not it’. He decides to rework the sky with a green tone: ‘from a distance it softens the tones by breaking them up’. In the painting it is clear that these light green stripes invigorate the sky.
The green is a colour that ‘appears as matt, dirty white on the palette’. It reminds Van Gogh of his illness. ‘Some of my paintings, when I compare them to others, certainly do bear the trace that it’s a sick man who paints them, and I can assure you that I don’t do it deliberately. But despite myself, my calculations end up at broken tones’.

The complete letter: https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let827/letter.html

Pine Trees against a Red Sky with Setting Sun


Saint-Rémy: November, 1889

Oil on canvas
92.0 x 73.0 cm.
 
Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum
https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-pine-trees-at-sunset

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)

He described the painting in two letters written in October 1889, one to Émile Bernard, as "a no. 30 canvas with broken lilac ploughed fields and a background of mountains that go all the way up the canvas; so nothing but rough ground and rocks, with a thistle and dry grass in a corner, and a little violet and yellow man", and another to his brother, Theo van Gogh, as "the same field as the one of the reaper. Now it’s mounds of earth and the background parched lands, then the rocks of the Alpilles. A bit of blue-green sky with small white and violet cloud. In the foreground: A thistle and some dry grass. A peasant dragging a bundle of straw in the middle. It’s another harsh study, and instead of being almost entirely yellow it makes an almost completely violet canvas. Broken and neutral violets … I think that this will complement the reaper and will make it easier to see what it is. For the reaper appears done at random, and this with it will balance it."
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosed_Field_with_Peasant
https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let810/letter.html

Enclosed Wheat Field with Peasant


Early October, 1889
Oil on canvas
73.5 x 92.0 cm. 


Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art
http://collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/56838/

From Indianapolis Museum of Art:

Van Gogh's spirituality and intense identification with the forces of nature transformed his views of the landscape into powerful personal expressions.
… It is one of four views of a walled wheat field executed in the autumn of 1889. Symbols of the artist's pantheistic beliefs, the ploughed terrain and rugged mountain peaks pulsate with a fertile inner life, charged by the picture's dynamic brushwork, rich surface texture, and varied colors. 

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889) 

In the autumn of 1889, Van Gogh painted the ravine near the asylum in the southern French town of Saint‑Remy. He wrote about it to his dear friend Emile Bernard: “Such subjects certainly have a fine melancholy, but then it is fun to work in rather wild places, where one has to dig one’s easel in between the stones lest the wind should blow the whole caboodle over.” The following spring, Van Gogh sent this painting to Paris, where Paul Gauguin saw it and wrote to him: “In subjects from nature you are the only one who thinks. I talked about it with your brother, and there is one that I would like to trade with you for one of mine of your choice. The one I am talking about is a mountain landscape. Two travelers, very small, seem to be climbing there in search of the unknown…Here and there, red touches like lights, the whole in a violet tone. It is beautiful and grandiose.”

Recent collaborative research has revealed beneath the surface of “Ravine” an earlier painting of a hillside in bloom, likely painted in June of the same year. It appears Van Gogh found himself short of materials; sacrificing the earlier composition, he reused the canvas to create this painting. <https://collections.mfa.org/objects/33491/ravine

Les Peiroulets Ravine

October, 1889


Oil on canvas
73.0 x 92.0 cm. 

Boston: Museum of Fine Arts
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/33491/ravine

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)

From The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York:

Van Gogh advocated painting from nature rather than inventing a motif from the imagination. On a personal level, he felt that painting outdoors would help to restore his health, a sentiment he often voiced when writing to his brother, Theo. He mentioned this painting several times in his letters, relating it to a passage from Edouard Rod’s Le Sens de la vie. In one note he wrote, “I rather like the ‘Entrance to a Quarry’—I was doing it when I felt this attack coming on—because to my mind the somber greens go well with the ocher tones; there is something sad in it which is healthy, and that is why it does not bore me. Perhaps that is true of the ‘Mountain’ too. They will tell me that mountains are not like that and that there are black outlines of a finger’s width. But after all it seemed to me it expressed the passage in Rod’s book . . . about a desolate country of somber mountains, among which are some dark goatherds’ huts where sunflowers are blooming.”

The complete letter: https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let784/letter.html

Mountains at Saint-Rémy with Dark Cottage


July, 1889


Oil on canvas
71.8 x 90.8 cm.
New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Justin K. Thannhauser Collection
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/1491

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)
 

While painting outdoors, Vincent sometimes draws the attention of other residents in the asylum:
“They all come to see when I’m working in the garden, and I can assure you are more discreet and more polite to leave me in peace than, for example, the good citizens of Arles.
It’s possible that I’ll stay here for quite a long time, never have I been so tranquil as here and at the hospital in Arles to be able to paint a little at last. Very near here there are some little grey or blue mountains, with very, very green wheatfields at their foot, and pines.”

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let772/letter.html

Tree Trunks with Ivy


Saint-Rémy: July, 1889


Oil on canvas
73.0 x 92.5 cm.

Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum
https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-tree-trunks-with-ivy

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889) 

If there is one painting that gives an intense depiction of the sweltering heat, the arid land, the crooked, twisting trunks and branches and the atmosphere of an olive grove in Provence, it is the next work by Vincent.

In this nature study, Van Gogh uses long brushstrokes for the tree trunks, branches and contours. For the majority of the rest of the painting – the ground, the leaves of the olive trees and the sky – he works with short, curved brushstrokes. This makes the air appear to vibrate and the heat in the olive grove almost palpable. Without painting the sun itself, here he depicts the sun’s energy and the power of nature.

https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-olive-grove

Olijfgaard (Olive Grove)
July, 1889

Oil on canvas
72.0 x 92.0 cm. 

Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum
https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-olive-grove

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889) 

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA:

Writing to his brother, Theo, from the asylum in Saint-Rémy on July 2, 1889, Van Gogh described his latest addition to the series he had launched that June: "I have a canvas of cypresses with a few ears of wheat, poppies, a blue sky, which is like a multicolored Scotch plaid." Van Gogh regarded this sun-drenched landscape as one of his "best" summer canvases and repeated the composition three times: first in a reed-pen drawing (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and then in two oil variants he made later that fall (National Gallery, London; private collection).

 
The complete letter: https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let784/letter.html

Wheat Field with Cypresses, at the Haute Galline Near Eygalieres
late June, 1889

Oil on canvas 

73.0 x 93.5 cm. 


New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art  

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436535

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)
 

 The next painting shows the view from Vincent’s room on the first floor of the asylum. The wheat is still partly green and poppies and daisies are growing in the front of the field. Van Gogh is delighted with this view: ‘But what a beautiful land and what beautiful blue and what a sun. And yet I’ve only seen the garden and what I can make out through the window

https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-enclosed-wheat-field-with-rising-sun

Het ommuurde korenveld met opkomende zon (Field of Spring Wheat at Sunrise)
Saint-Rémy: May-June, 1889
Oil on canvas
72.0 x 92.0 cm. 
Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum
https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-enclosed-wheat-field-with-rising-sun

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889) 

Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Arles, and it was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron. Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio. The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital's interiors, such as Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Rémy (September 1889), and its gardens, such as Lilacs (May 1889). Some of his works from this time are characterised by swirls, such as The Starry Night. He was allowed short supervised walks, during which time he painted cypresses and olive trees, including Valley with Ploughman Seen from Above, Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889, Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), Country road in Provence by Night (1890). In September 1889, he produced two further versions of Bedroom in Arles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh#Saint-R%C3%A9my_(May_1889_%E2%80%93_May_1890)

Two White Butterflies


Spring, 1889
Oil on canvas
55.0 x 45.5 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0110V1962

 

 Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum

 Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)

Today we have a very well known work of Vincent, you probably all know it, but I still wanted to post it.

Van Gogh started painting Irises within a month of entering the asylum, in May 1889, working from nature in the hospital garden. There is a lack of the high tension which is seen in his later works. He called painting "the lightning conductor for my illness" because he felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint.
The painting was probably influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints like many of his works and those by other artists of the time. The similarities occur with strong outlines, unusual angles, including close-up views, and also flattish local color (not modeled according to the fall of light). The painting is full of softness and lightness. Irises is full of life without tragedy.
He considered this painting a study which is probably why there are no known drawings for it, although Theo, Van Gogh's brother, thought better of it and quickly submitted it to the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in September 1889, together with Starry Night Over the Rhone. He wrote to Vincent of the exhibition: "[It] strikes the eye from afar. The Irises are a beautiful study full of air and life." The painting is one of his most renowned works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irises_(painting)

Irises
May, 1889


Oil on canvas
71 x 93 cm. 


Getty Center
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103JNH

Vincent in Saint-Rémy
(1889)

In May 1889 Vincent wrote to his brother Theo, "Yesterday I drew a very large, rather rare night moth there which is called the death’s head, its coloration astonishingly distinguished: black, grey, white, shaded, and with glints of carmine or vaguely tending towards olive green; it’s very big. To paint it I would have had to kill it, and that would have been a shame since the animal was so beautiful."

Later he decided to paint the moth after all, using his drawing as a model. Van Gogh called it a 'death's-head moth' and depicted a kind of skull on the back of its body. It was actually a giant peacock moth, however – a species that has only stripes there.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/s0189V1962

Grote nachtpauwoog (Great Peacock Moth) 


May, 1889
Oil on canvas
33.5 x 24.5 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/s0189V1962

 

sketch from the letter to his brother.

Vincent in Arles 

(1889)

"My dear Vincent,
Thank you very much for your letter, Jo was also very pleased with the one you wrote to her. We were pleased to learn that your journey to St-Rémy went well, and that you feel calmer there than in Arles. All the same, I hope that your stay will only be for a short length of time, for having these mad people as your neighbours can’t be agreeable. What I would like is that we could discover some people somewhere who would take care of you while allowing you your entire freedom. That must be possible to find. If you didn’t fear returning to Paris or its surroundings, I would try to find somewhere like that for you to board.

From a letter by his brother Theo.
https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let774/letter.html

Orchard in Blossom with View of Arles


April, 1889
Oil on canvas
72.0 x 92.0 cm. 


Munich: Neue Pinakothek
https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/RQ4XPBz410/vincent-van-gogh/blick-auf-arles

Vincent in Arles
(1889)
 

"At the end of the month I’d still wish to go to the mental hospital at St-Rémy or another institution of that kind, which Mr Salles has told me about.
Forgive me for not going into details to weigh up the pros and the cons of such a course of action.
It would strain my mind a great deal to talk about it.
It will, I hope, suffice to say that I feel decidedly incapable of starting to take a new studio again and living there alone, here in Arles or elsewhere – it comes down to the same thing – for the moment – I’ve nevertheless tried to make up my mind to begin again – for the moment not possible. I’d be afraid of losing the faculty of working, which is coming back to me now, by forcing myself to have a studio, and also having all the other responsibilities on my back.
And for the time being I wish to remain confined, as much for my own tranquillity as for that of others.
What consoles me a little is that I’m beginning to consider madness as an illness like any other and accept the thing as it is, while during the actual crises it seemed to me that everything I was imagining was reality. "

From a letter to his brother Theo, Arles, Sunday, 21 April 1889
https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let760/letter.html

Grass and Butterflies


April, 1889
Oil on canvas
51.0 x 51.0 cm. 


France: private collection

Vincent in Arles 

(1889)

<i>Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January 1889. He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning. In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as "le fou roux" (the redheaded madman); Van Gogh returned to the hospital.
Paul Signac visited him twice in March; in April Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home. Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant." </i>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles

April, 1889 


Oil on canvas
73.0 x 92.0 cm. 


Winterthur: Oskar Reinhart Collection 'Am Römerholz'

Vincent in Arles
(1889)
 

The exact sequence that led to the mutilation of Van Gogh’s ear are not known.
Gauguin said, fifteen years later, that the night followed several instances of physically threatening behaviour. Their relationship was complex and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who suspected the brothers were exploiting him financially. It seems likely that Vincent realised that Gauguin was planning to leave. The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House. Gauguin recalled that Van Gogh followed him after he left for a walk and "rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand." 

This account is uncorroborated; Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely staying in a hotel.

After an altercation on the evening of 23 December 1888 Van Gogh returned to his room where he seemingly heard voices and either wholly or in part severed his left ear with a razor causing severe bleeding. He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented. Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital, where he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training. The ear was brought to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed. Van Gogh researcher and art historian Bernadette Murphy discovered the true identity of the woman named Gabrielle, who died in Arles at the age of 80 in 1952, and whose descendants still live just outside Arles. Gabrielle, known in her youth as "Gaby," was a 17-year-old cleaning girl at the brothel and other local establishments at the time Van Gogh presented her with his ear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe


Arles: January, 1889
Oil on canvas
51.0 x 45.0 cm. 


Collection Niarchos

Vincent in Arles
(1888)
 

Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October and, in November, he and Vincent painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion. Among these "imaginative" paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten.
Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants Les Alyscamps. The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was his portrait of Van Gogh.
After a couple of weeks their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of "excessive tension", rapidly headed towards a crisis point leading to the mutilation of his ear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Paul Gauguin - Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers
1888
Oil on jute
73 x 91 cm
Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0225V1962

Was Van Gogh really painting a vase of sunflowers when his friend Gauguin produced this portrait of him? No, he can’t have been: it was December and far too late in the year for sunflowers. But it’s quite probable that Van Gogh painted a copy of one of his own sunflower pictures around this time. The landscape in the background is also fictional: unlike Van Gogh, Gauguin liked to work from his imagination. They often argued about this. This painting refers to their disagreement.
Later, Van Gogh wrote about this portrait: ‘My face has lit up a lot since, but it was indeed me, extremely tired and charged with electricity as I was then.’

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0225V1962

Portrait of Gauguin
December 1888
Oil on burlap on panel
38,2 x 33,8 cm
Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0257V1962

Van Gogh painted his friend, the artist Paul Gauguin, in their studio in the Yellow House. He made this small portrait on jute – an unusual but inexpensive material. Gauguin had bought some in Arles for the two of them to use. The coarse structure of the cloth made painting difficult, so Van Gogh applied the paint thickly and opted for a strong red-green contrast.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0257V1962

Vincent in Arles
(1888)

It still amazes me how different some digital pics can be on the internet. 

A good examples the next painting date October 1888  mentioned in a letter to Theo:

<i>  …the Trinquetaille bridge with all its steps is a canvas done on a grey morning, the stones, the asphalt, the cobblestones are grey, the sky a pale blue, the small figures colourful, a puny tree with yellow foliage.</i>

So the reproduction should be grey and what do you find online is this:

But also this:

The Trinquetaille Bridge


October, 1888
Oil on canvas
73.5 x 92.5 cm. 


Private collection

Since the whereabouts of this painting are unknown it’s impossible to determine which one is more accurate.
Probably the second but I can’t help also liking the first…
Which one do you prefer?

The bridge on Google streetview:

 

Vincent in Arles
(1888)

After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October and, in November, the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion. Among these "imaginative" paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten. Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants Les Alyscamps. The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was his portrait of Van Gogh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh
 

Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh. Pont-Aven, between about Saturday, 17 and about Monday, 19 March 1888.

My dear Vincent
Thank you for replying; I see that you’re in a good spot to study the sun that enchants you, and you’re working all the better because the subject grips you. Thank you again for your good will towards me; the trade in paintings is so hard in our day and age. Despite that, I’m in a state of constant agony here; money worries are the only ones that have an effect on me, and unfortunately I believe I’m fated always to suffer from them.
Pont-Aven is very dreary at the moment because of the bad weather, continual wind and rain, and I’m waiting for the fine days to get back to work, which I’ve neglected a bit owing to illness.
A cordial handshake.
Paul Gauguin </i>
https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let586/letter.html

A Lane in the Public Garden at Arles


September, 1888
Oil on canvas
73.0 x 92.0 cm. 


Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum

Vincent in Arles
(1888)

Ah, my dear brother, sometimes I know so clearly what I want. In life and in painting too, I can easily do without the dear Lord, but I can’t, suffering as I do, do without something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.
And if frustrated in this power physically, we try to create thoughts instead of children; in that way, we’re part of humanity all the same. And in a painting I’d like to say something consoling, like a piece of music. I’d like to paint men or women with that je ne sais quoi of the eternal, of which the halo used to be the symbol, and which we try to achieve through the radiance itself, through the vibrancy of our colorations.

From  letter to his brother Theo. Date: Arles, Monday, 3 September 1888

Ploughed Field. The Furrows
September, 1888 


Oil on canvas
72.5 x 92.5 cm. 


Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0040V1962

 Vincent in Arles
(1888)  

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA:
For Van Gogh, oleanders were joyous, life-affirming flowers that bloomed "inexhaustibly" and were always "putting out strong new shoots." In this painting of August 1888 the flowers fill a majolica jug that the artist used for other still lifes made in Arles. They are symbolically juxtaposed with Émile Zola's La joie de vivre, a novel that Van Gogh had placed in contrast to an open Bible in a Nuenen still life of 1885.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436530

Still Life: Vase with Oleanders and Books


August, 1888
Oil on canvas
60.3 x 73.6 cm. 

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436530