In October 1888, Gaugin moved in with Van Gogh. And lasted two months. He announced plans to leave Arles and return to Paris, to the grave disappointment of Vincent who had hoped that Gaugin's presence would encourage others to join his idealized Artist Colony.
Longing for acceptance and intimacy, and failing at both, Van Gogh sunk deeper into depression when he learned that his brother–and sole financial supporter–Theo, was newly engaged. That evening, December 23rd, he escalated into delirium and cut off a portion of his right ear. Covering his hemorrhaging head in a beret, he walked to a brothel and delivered an envelope to a prostitute named Rachel.
"Here's a remembrance of me," he said, leaving his ear.
Later that evening, Gaugin returned to the shared Yellow House where a crowd was gathered. A police commissioner confronted him, "What have you done to your comrade? He is dead."
But he was not. The bewildered Gaugin found him asleep, then bid a silent farewell. Vincent spent two weeks at Arles hospital, then returned to his Yellow House lonely and depressed. A month later he had another "attack," hallucinating and accusing people of poisoning each other. His fearful neighbors filed a complaint, prompting the landlord to terminate Vincent's rental contract.
Vincent had nowhere to go. His clergy recommended a short stay at the mental hospital in St. Remy. Van Gogh accepted that he was ill–at least mad in the manner that he deviated from social conventions like Moses, Rembrandt and Luther–and agreed to a stay if he was allowed to paint and go outside.
Not only did they allow him to paint, but gave him an additional room for a studio. Van Gogh produced a prolific 189 paintings and 10 drawings during his 53 week stay.
I was eager to see the place that inspired him and visited twice, returning by car to Arles and L'Isle la-sur-sorge, 30 and 60 minutes away.
I walked along the worn cobblestone road under a canopy of towering cedar trees leading to the entrance of St. Paul's 10th century monastery. Chirping birds accentuated the otherwise still silence. Tall narrow cypress trees and thick green shrubs almost hid the colored easels depicting Van Gogh paintings of his favorite subjects–curly swirled renditions of olive trees, cypress trees, irises–anything in nature.
I analyzed each one, comparing his paintings with the actual scene. His silvery olive trees, purple irises and evergreens appear untouched, still standing in places where he painted them.
Oddly enough, he did not paint or write about Les Antiques, two massive Roman monuments located a hundred yards across the grove from the monastery. Surely in his wanderings he would've walked under the gigantic triumphal arch and stared at the battle scenes depicted on the mausoleum. Stranger yet is the realization that Vincent walked and painted in an adjacent olive grove where the ancient city of Glanum was buried, its only tell-tale sign an ornately carved column sticking out of the ground near an olive tree. If Vincent saw it, he made no mention of it, other than to admit to Theo that the olive trees–which to him symbolized peace and glory–created a "tremendously old murmur." Old indeed. Intact temples, baths and alters, excavated in 1921, were found in Glanum, inhabited by Gallo-Greeks in 3BC.
Instead, the subjects of his paintings and frequent letters were landscapes of the surrounding Alpilles mountains, reapers in wheat fields, trees, flowers, scenes of the asylum, and himself. In his replica bedroom upstairs, I saw the two self-portraits he completed here hanging on pale green walls. One shows the guardedness, loneliness and distress of a fairly distinguished red-haired gentleman, while the other depicts nonchalant acceptance of his illness with a resigned expression and heavily bandaged ear.
His room, simple but poetic, looked out onto fields which he often painted. "There are vast fields of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness. I think these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words... I see in this reaper a vague figure fighting like a devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task–the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping...but there is nothing sad in this death, it goes its way in broad daylight with the sun flooding everything with a light of pure gold," he wrote Theo, describing his famous Reaper.
He was permitted to paint ‘one hour away on foot from the asylum' or wander farther when accompanied by his attendant, young Francois Poulet. He was generally content here. "I assure you that I am well here and that at the moment I have no reason at all to go back to Paris or the surroundings," he wrote a month after his arrival–the same month he produced his masterpiece, Starry Night.
But over the course of his stay, he experienced four distinct fits lasting between 15 and 30 days, followed by lengthy periods of unproductiveness. During such fits he became terrified of the nuns, experienced visual and auditory hallucinations, and tried to poison himself by ingesting paint and lamp oil. Therapy practiced at that time–irrelevant of the illness–was hydrotherapy. All patients endured baths in form-fitting tubs with wooden covers restricting all but one's head. Two such baths are displayed across from Vincent's bedroom, along with French posters illustrating traditional hydrotherapy treatment.
He would've experienced surprise baths–abrupt jets of icy water on his head–during mania episodes to distract him from delirium, destructive or delusional thoughts. It's less clear if he was also exposed to shock treatments, restrained in a straightjacket or rotary machine, all common asylum practices during early 19th century.
Between fits he resumed normalcy. "Now I feel completely normal. My health is OK. I think that Doctor Peyron is right when he says that I'm not crazy because my mind is absolutely clear, even more so than before..." he wrote Theo, late 1889.
On May 17th, 1890, Van Gogh left the monastery and arrived in Paris as a "robust man with healthy colors, a happy expression and something solid emanating from his person" according to Theo, who introduced Vincent to his wife and namesake son. Vincent continued on to Auvers su Oise a few days later and re-integrated himself in society under the guidance of Dr. Gachet.
But depression snuck back in. By late June, Theo had expressed financial difficulties with Vincent's allowance, and Dr. Gachet forbade him to come over again when Vincent proclaimed his love for his 21 year old daughter. On July 27th, Van Gogh ran out to a wheat field, shot himself in the chest, and died two days later in his brother's arms. (Theo was subsequently institutionalized after threats to kill his wife and son, and died six months after his brother.)
Dr. Jean-Marc Boulon, the current psychiatrist practicing and living at St. Paul de-Mausole, sheds interesting light on the life of Van Gogh in his book. He examines his family history of melancholy and suicide, summarizes symptoms gleaned from letters and past medical records, and concludes that Van Gogh likely suffered from a manic-depressive bipolar disorder worsened by epileptic fits caused by a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning, bromide and absinth ingestion.
There is no doubt that Van Gogh would be treated differently in the 21st century. We can only wonder what masterpieces he could've created, experimenting and expanding on his ten year career. Clearly he had an inner drive to produce those 879 paintings, even though many he gave away were used for target practice or for repairing holes in hen houses and barns.
He sold only one during his lifetime, "Red Vineyards" to Anna Boch, for 400 francs. Yet he persisted, a glimmer of hope resurrecting between each psychological torment. "If I am worth anything later, I am worth something also now, for wheat is wheat, even if people think it is grass in the beginning," he wrote Theo.
I thought of his humbling words as I wound down the massive limestone staircase curving down from his hallway. Echoes from my footsteps ceased when I stepped into the gift shop, Valetude, and looked at the artistic expressions emerging at the monastery.
Van Gogh may have left in 1890, but his influence lingers. Art therapy now dominates the treatment scene, not hydrotherapy. Patients, encouraged to paint on the tranquil grounds of this peaceful retreat, exhibit their artwork beside Van Gogh prints in this Center Valetude near the cloisters.
Van Gogh would be pleased. It was his dream to unite artists, to create a "shelter for poor and exhausted impressionists." His Yellow House Artist Colony may have failed, but the St. Paul Monastery continues to provide a caring shelter for poor, mentally exhausted patients yet today.