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When Vincent Van Gogh’s dreams of establishing a ground-breaking community of progressive artists in Arles ended in disappointment with the departure of Paul Gauguin and in the aftermath of the incident of the severed ear, his mental state deteriorated rapidly. His neighbours in the town signed a petition demanding that he be admitted to an asylum and Vincent himself recognised that his state of health meant that he could no longer continue to live and work at the Yellow House. He voluntarily admitted himself to to the asylum of St-Paul-de-Mausole just outside the town of Saint-Rémy de Provence in May 1889. He was given two rooms, one of which he could use as a studio. Although his fellow inmates all had psychological problems of some sort, the physical environment offered him peace and tranquility and an atmosphere in which he could once again channel his mental energy into painting.
Apart from Van Gogh the town can boast some other celebrity residents. Nostradamus, the great Renaissance scholar and astrologer with a talent for 'prophecy' was born here in 1503. Charles Gounod, the musician and composer, stayed in the town in 1863 and derived inspiration from the surrounding countryside. The family home of the infamous Marquis de Sade once housed the archaeological museum and on the other side of the moral compass Dr Albert Schweitzer spent some time here in the First World War, as a virtual prisoner. Albert Gleizes was an influential artist and philosopher and is recognised as one of the founding fathers of Cubism and he spent the last fifteen years of his life in Saint-Rémy. Slightly less well-known is Pierre Daboval whose 'fantastico-érotique' work may have appealed to the Marquis de Sade. He was a resident for many years and the Musée Estrine has a collection of his works. Finally Princess Caroline of Monaco had a house here for several years.
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The town is located 20 kilometers south of Avignon at the foot of the Massif des Alpilles in lovely countryside and has a typically Provençal atmosphere. Although there are many buildings dating from medieval times and impressive examples of eighteenth century architecture the origins of the town go back much further. Close by St-Paul-de-Mausole is the site of ancient Glanum which was originally settled in about 500BC and subsequently developed under the influence of Greek merchants from Marseille. In the 1st century AD the Romans colonised the place and impressive public, civic and religious buildings were erected, the remains of which can still be seen today. There is a magnificent mausoleum and triumphal arch dating from 30–20BC. It was in the 2nd century that the settlement was destroyed by barbarian invaders and the surviving population moved to what is now the town of St-Rémy. Over the centuries the site was forgotten and buried and was not rediscovered until the beginning of the 20th century.
Just outside the Musée Estrine is the first panel showing La méridienne dit aussi la sieste (d’apès Millet), 1889–90 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). The work of Millet which explores the reality of peasant life was a great inspiration for Van Gogh who had witnessed first-hand the struggles of desperately poor mining communities of the Borinage during his time as an evangelical preacher. This is Vincent’s interpretation of a drawing by Millet and while the content is faithful to the original the image is an unmistakable vision of Van Gogh with it’s vibrant colour palette and vigorous brushstrokes. A fitting start to this pilgrimage of paintings. The next panel is to be found in Place Pelissier, a few steps away.
In this very pretty and typically Provençal square with the Hôtel de Ville as a backdrop, there is a reproduction of one of the many self-portraits painted by the artist during his short painting life. In Portrait de l’artiste, 1889 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) his troubled state of mind is perhaps alluded to in the turbulent background and there is no avoiding the intensity of Vincent’s gaze. As he wrote to his brother, Theo: “People say (...) that it is difficult to know oneself – but it is not easy to paint oneself either. Thus I’m working on two portraits of myself at the moment (...). I’m struggling with all my energy to master my work, telling myself that if I win this it will be the best lightning conductor for the illness.” You now leave the square and proceed along Rue de la Commune until you reach the stone arch of Porte St-Paul with the main road of Boulevard Victor Hugo beyond. 
Just through the arch you will find the next panel and In this instance Les Paveurs, 1889 (Cleveland Museum of Art, USA) is positioned in more-or-less the place where the artist set up his easel. In a letter to his brother, Theo he wrote: “In spite of the cold I have continued to work outside until now, and I think that it is good for me and for the work. The last study I have done is a view of the village, where they were at work – under some enormous plane trees – repairing the pavements. So there are heaps of sand, stones and gigantic trunks – the leaves yellowing and here and there you get a glimpse of a house front and small figures.” The plane trees, some venerable indeed, still line the road although now in company with parked vehicles. You now cross the road and take Avenue Pasteur in the direction of the Tourist Office.
The next panel is positioned just outside the Tourist Information Offfice – always a useful point of contact with very helpful staff who can assist with most enquiries. The painting shown is La Nuit Étoilée, 1889 (MoMA, New York). Soon after the start of his confinement at St Paul, Van Gogh wrote to Theo: “All is going well for me – you will understand that after almost half a year of absolute sobriety in eating, drinking, smoking, and two 2-hour baths a week recently, this must clearly calm one down a great deal. So all is going very well, and as regards work, it occupies and distracts me – which I need very much (...). At last I have a landscape with olive trees, and also a new study of a starry sky.”
Now continue along Avenue Pasteur and just after the junction with Avenue Pierre Barbier on the left you will come to the next panel showing Champ de blé vert avec cyprès, 1889 (Náodní Galerie, Prague). In June 1889 he wrote to his sister, Wil: “(...) the fact is that I am well; but as I am telling you, the desire to begin again, the joy of living, is hardly great. I’ve just finished a landscape that depicts a field of yellowing wheat surrounded by brambles and green bushes. At the end of the field a little pink house with a tall and dark cypress tree that stands out against the distant purplish and bluish hills (...).” If you look down the road those same imposing hills of the Alpilles are clearly visible.
A little further on where Avenue Durand Maillane joins on the left you will find the next panel showing Route au cyprès avec une étoile, 1890 (Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands). This was painted shortly before Van Gogh left the asylum and moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, north-west of Paris. In a letter written there to Paul Gauguin, he wrote: “I also have a cypress with a star from over there. A last try – a night sky with a moon without brightness, the slender crescent barely emerging from the opaque projected shadow of the earth (...). Very romantic if you like, but also ‘Provençal’ I think. I will probably make etchings of this one, and of other landscapes and subjects, memories of Provence (...).” The painting is a work of imagination and is, perhaps, a summary of the many impressions he acquired during his stay in Provence,
Continue along the same road which is now called, very appropriately, Avenue Vincent Van Gogh. Just beyond a bridge that crosses a narrow waterway you will find the next panel which shows Amandier en fleurs, 1890 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). There is undoubted reference to Japanese printmaking in this picture which was a gift for his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo, who had just had a baby son named Vincent Willem. In a letter to his mother, Vincent wrote: “How glad I was when the news came that everything had gone well (...). I would have much preferred that he’d called his boy after Pa, whom I’ve thought about so often these days, than after me (...), I started right away to make a painting for him, to hang in their bedroom. Large branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.”
Following the brass studs in the pavement reassuring you that you are still on the right road, cross the junction with Avenue J. d’Arbaud and Avenue F. de Barconcelli and the next panel shows Cyprès avec deux femmes, 1889 (Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands). Cypress trees were a recurring element in his work and the swirling brushstrokes hint at the emotional intensity of the creative process and as he wrote to Albert Aurier, a fellow-artist: “I shall add a study of cypresses for you to the next consignment I send to my brother (...). I am still working on it at the moment, wanting to put in a small figure. (...) Until now I have not been able to do them as I feel them; the emotions that take hold of me in the face of nature go as far as fainting, and then the result is a fortnight during which I am incapable of working.”
At a point where Avenue A. de la Salle joins the main road you will find the next panel showing Le Ravin des Peiroulets, 1889 (Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands). The subject of this landscape, full of drama and energy, with distinctive rock formations is undoubtedly in the hills close to St Paul. It is perhaps not too far-fetched to see it as a reflection of the artist’s state of mind. In December 1889 he wrote to his mother: “And today I admit that I should have been treated earlier, but to err is human. A French writer says that all painters are more or less mad to some degree, and although there’s a great deal to be said against that, it is certain that therefore we become too distracted. (...) At the moment I’m working on a painting of a path in the mountains and a small stream that is working its way between the stones.” Our route continues along the main road but if you were to take a diversion along Avenue A. de la Salle you would come to the ancient Jewish cemetery and a little way beyond that it is possible to take a footpath running alongside a small ravine that eventually brings you to the Roman mausoleum and triumphal arch close to St. Paul.
A little further along the main road you will come to a panel showing Champ de coquelicots, 1889 (Kunsthalle, Bremen). Soon after entering the hospital at St Paul Vincent wrote to his brother: “I’m in good health – so-so, I feel happier with my work here than I could feel outside. (...) I once went into the village – accompanied, at that. The mere sight of people and objects had an effect on me as if I was going to faint (...). In the face of nature it is the feeling for this work that keeps me going. (...) Many things in the landscape here often remind one of Ruisdale (...).”
Now cross over Avenue Docteur Edgar Leroy and you will find the next panel showing Champ de blé avec cyprès, 1889 (The National Gallery, London). That is if you can resist taking a stroll down this minor road which eventually brings you to the back of St Paul de Mausole and passes a delightful grove of olive trees – you really begin to appreciate the beauty of the landscape. Vincent wrote to Theo: “The cypresses still proccupy me (...). It is
beautiful as regards lines and proportions, like an Egyptian obelisk.
And the green has such a distinguished quality. It is the dark patch in a
sun-drenched landscape, but it is one of the most interesting dark
notes, the most difficult to hit off exactly that I can imagine. Now
they must be seen here against the blue, in the blue, rather.”
Just a few steps further along and the panel showing Cueilleuses d’olives, 1889 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) comes into view. Finally we come to a location that matches exactly the content of the painting, except for the women harvesting the crop, that is. To Theo, Vincent wrote: “(...) the olive trees are very characteristic, and I’m struggling to capture that. It is silver, sometimes more blue, sometimes greenish, bronzed, whitening on ground that is yellow, pink, purplish or orangeish to dull red ochre. But very difficult, very difficult. But that suits me and attracts me to work fully in gold or silver. And one day perhaps I’ll do a personal impression of it (...).”
Before turning off the main road to reach the hospital there is another panel showing Le Faucheur, 1889 (Museum-Folkwang, Essen, Germany). This is actually a view that Vincent could see through the barred window of his bedroom and features a reaper toiling in a field of wheat under an unremitting sun. In one of his, almost daily, letters to Theo he wrote: “(...) I’m struggling with a canvas begun a few days before my indisposition. A reaper – the study is all yellow – terribly thickly impasted, but the subject was beautiful and simple. I then saw in this reaper (...) the image of death in the sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped. (...) But in this death there is nothing sad, it takes place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold.”
A few steps along the entrance road to St Paul, lined with pine trees, on the left is the next panel showing Pins sur un ciel du soir, 1889 (Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands). The significance of this rather melancholy image of broken trees at the close of day is captured in a letter to fellow-artist Emile Bernard: “This edge of the garden is planted with large pines with red ochre trunks and branches (...). These tall trees stand out against an evening sky (...). You will understand that this combination of red ochre, of green saddened with grey, of black lines that define the outlines, this gives rise a little to the feeling of anxiety from which some of my companions in misfortune often suffer, and which is called ‘seeing red’.”
On the other side of the road you find a panel showing Les Alpilles aux oliviers, 1889 (MoMA, New York). The artist has taken slight liberties with the arrangement of olive trees with the distinctive profile of Les Alpilles in the background but all the essential elements of the painting are still there to be seen. He admitted to this artistic licence in a letter to Theo: “The olive trees with white clouds and a background of mountains, as well as the moonrise and the night effect – these are exaggerations from the point of view of composition, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts. The olive trees are more in character, just as in the other study and I’ve tried to depict the time of day when one sees the green beetles and the cicadas flying in the heat.”
A few steps further along and you come to the next panel and the view beyond, which has hardly changed since Van Gogh painted it. This shows Oliveraie, 1889 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, USA). In May 1890 he wrote to Joseph Jacob Isaäcson: “Well, the day is probably not far off when people will paint the olive tree in every way as they have painted the willow and Dutch pollard willow, as they have painted the Norman apple tree since Daubigny and César de Cocq. The effect of daylight, of the sky, means that there is an infinity of motifs to be drawn from the olive tree. I myself looked for some effects of opposition between the changing foliage and the tones of the sky.”
On the other side of the roadway you find the panel showing Hôpital Saint-Paul à Saint-Rémy, 1889 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Soon after he arrived to start his period of voluntary confinement he wrote to his brother Theo: “Since I’ve been here, the neglected garden planted with tall pines under which grows tall and badly tended grass intermingled with various weeds, has provided me with enough work, and I haven’t yet gone outside. (...) I have a little room with grey-green wallpaper with two water-green curtains with designs of very pale roses (...). Through the iron-barred window I can make out a square field of wheat in an enclosure (...).” The view shown in the painting is now part of the present-day psychiatric hospital and is not accessible to visitors.
Continue along the road until the entrance to the monastery complex is in front of you and to the left you will find a panel showing Les iris, 1889 (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles). These stunning flowers still grow in the grounds of Saint Paul and if you are visiting at the right time you will have no difficulty in transporting yourself to the motif that so inspired Van Gogh. This is a harmonious image suffused with colour with an air of calm and well-being – not the work of a man losing his mind. As he wrote to his brother: “I wanted to tell you that I think I’ve done well to come here, first, in seeing the reality of life for the diverse mad or crazy people in this menagerie, I’m losing the vague dread, the fear of the thing. And little by little I can come to consider madness as being an illness like any other. And the change of surroundings is doing me good, I imagine. (...) The idea of the duty to work comes back to me a lot (...).”
Before entering the monastery precincts turn to the right and after a few metres you will come to a panel showing Prairie dans les montagnes, 1889 (Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands). The distinctive profile of Les Alpilles provides the backdrop yet again for this work and the landscape roundabout was a constant source of inspiration. As he wrote to Theo: “And I feel the country here, through the long stay, differently than as the first place I encountered – good ideas are now germinating a little and should be left to develop. (...) I have a great desire to do more of both the cypresses and the Alpilles, and often going on long walks in all directions I’ve noted many subjects and know good places for when the fine days come.”
Now return to the entrance to continue your Van Gogh 'pilgrimage' and you will find many more reproductions of his work around the grounds. The physical environment of the monastery buildings and the landscape beyond the walls are still very much as Van Gogh would have known them and it is perfectly possible to walk in his footsteps. A visit to his bedroom – little more than a cell – and the view from its barred-window is a moving experience. Although the treatment he received here undoubtedly helped to calm his mental state and facilitated his irrepressible need to create great works of art, it is hard not to conclude that in a more enlightened age the therapy available would have given him a much better chance of dealing with his demons and allow him to take his adventures in paint to unimaginable places ... what might have been! 
