This week, I’ve been following the footsteps of Van Gogh a little more. He spent just over a year of his life as a patient in what was then called an asylum, of St Paul de Mausole, just outside of St-Rémy de Provence, in France. It’s not far from Arles, where Van Gogh set up The Yellow House, his beloved home for which he had high hopes of it becoming an artists’ colony. However, following a mental breakdown during which he argued with Paul Gaugin and famously cut off an ear, he became a voluntary patient at the Hotel Dieu in Arles. After a few months of recovery there, he tried to live back in Arles but a petition by local people made him realise that he wasn’t as welcome as he once thought he was. He was suffering a number of physical and mental health problems, so became a voluntary patient at St Paul.
St Paul de Mausole, despite its slightly creepy name referencing a mausoleum, has been a hospital and care facility for centuries. It still runs a mental health clinic, inpatient mental health unit and residential home for elderly people with care and mental health needs in modern accommodation built just off the historic site; the historic site consists the original chapel and cloister of the monastery with a mission for caring for people, around which more buildings were erected in the 19th century as St Paul expanded its work alongside French public health legislation and a growing recognition of the sciences of psychiatry and psychology.

It’s at this point that Van Gogh arrives, experiencing visual hallucinations and in distress, but at the point of admission, remaining poised, articulate and dignified. He wrote often to his brother and friends during his year there, clearly feeling a benefit from the more regulated form of life as a patient in a calm setting where he was enabled to paint and draw, the doctor there recognising this as a form of therapy and an inherent need for Van Gogh, which had not been his experience when first admitted to the facility in Arles. Slowly, Van Gogh started to recover but suffered further mental breakdowns during this year, which distressed him greatly as they were unpredictable. There are all sorts of diagnoses that have been given to Van Gogh since he became famous. The main working diagnoses are for depression with bi-polar disorder along with the effects of excessive alcohol consumption, the effects of poor diet and self-neglect, as well as seizures and potentially carbon monoxide poisoning thrown in – houses in Arles were starting to be supplied with gas for lighting that resulted in what are now known to be high carbon monoxide readings; over 200 patients were reported as suffering physical health problems in Arles after the first gas installations, so there may be something in that too. Reading Van Gogh’s letters, it is clear that he was single-minded, passionate about art and the way that colour and life made him feel, even before his breakdowns. He was articulate and obsessive about self-expression as well as learning about art, colour and from others, making a real study of art. To what extent his own work is part of, or reflective of, a mental state is difficult to determine with any accuracy; his letters are certainly illustrative of the way in which this changed often over the 9 years he dedicated to being an artist.

There are two emotions that sing to me from his letters and from his paintings – hope and love. I wonder if this is why I find him and his art so fascinating. I have quite a Pollyanna attitude to life and love – I look for love and hope in everything. What I find so sad about Van Gogh is that his hope seemed to run out in the end, but his love did not. Hope was the main message of Barack Obama’s political life and I have never stopped admiring or reacting positively to that and to his excellent books and speeches. His presidency was by no means perfect and there are policy decisions that I find difficult to understand but he was elected on a platform of hope and he extended that to practical help and opportunity for thousands of people. Pretty remarkable, given how much his successor is scaling back those opportunities, actively shrinking access to the American Dream, elected on a platform of selfishness and distrust.

Something I wrote about briefly in an earlier post about Van Gogh was the feeling of wanting to make a connection and I think this is what brought me back to Arles this week. Betty, the wonderful Brompton bike, gave me the opportunity to get to St-Rémy and explore some of the area that Van Gogh painted over 100 times, including some of his most famous paintings of wheat fields and poplar trees (such as the one in the National Gallery, all swirling skies and bright colours). It was around the hospital in St Paul that he painted the almond blossom, a striking painting of tree branches above you, against a vast turquoise sky. It was painted for his baby nephew, named Vincent in his honour, and expresses such love for his brother and his nephew in just one painting. It also expresses a lot of hope in new life and is the more poignant for it.

It was lovely to see the hospital and the gardens and countryside that meant so much to Van Gogh, to his life, his recovery and his work. The scenery is different to what is considered classically beautiful in landscape painting – olive groves, tall, thin poplar trees, rolling wheat fields, limestone crags and changeable skies. Cycling there and walking around made me feel as though I was walking in his paintings – however he interpreted life, colour and energy and put these in to his paintings, you can feel part of it just being there. He found the scenery fascinating and captivating; he was given a bedroom as a patient in the old monastery building, around a gorgeous cloister and overlooking the gardens, and a second room in the more modern building, which he used as a studio. To start with, he kept himself in his bedroom, painting his room and the view from the window, which you can see today. When he felt more comfortable, he started taking long walks in the hospital gardens, captured in several beautiful paintings, and recognisable still today in the grounds, which have been sympathetically kept for current patients as well as Van Gogh enthusiasts. I said hello to a few of each on my way around. The cloister had a modern art exhibition all the way around it. There is a partnership between an art group at St-Rémy that works out of St Paul and a modern art school in New York. Both schools focus on art as a form of expression and therapy, and on display were a number of works from students from France and the USA. A whole range of emotions and situations were expressed and brought home the power of art today as well as to one Dutch artist over 100 years ago who is beloved of many today.
He then found more confidence in walking around the surrounding countryside, capturing the agrarian cycle in this part of France, as well as landscapes that often hint of new life and exploring colour and emotions. After a year, whilst not completely well, he felt recovered enough to move away from the South of France, a place that had started with great hope for him but did not turn out that way. He moved north of Paris, to Auvers sur Oise, where he spent the last 70 days of his life, where I visited recently.

It is hard not to compare and contrast in spite of the fact that I have a completely different life to Van Gogh – different In time, gender, profession, life chances, nationality, talent . But there are connections none the less – a love for others and a love for hope, a love for colour and a way of feeling all of the feels, despite the brainstorm this causes (to use the word in the mental health sense). I’ve outlived Van Gogh by one year already and another artist I love by 11 years. I’ve done nothing of such significance and contributed little to the world apart of payment of taxes and distributing a lot of love and sarcasm (as love) along the way. I am happy to spread the gospel Don’t Be A Dick as I go along. I’m a loyal friend with a sponge for a brain, ever content to learn and share, and over-share, in long, long sentences as I bimble through life – Van Gogh’s writing was a lot more elegant than mine, but the other qualities are shared.

Near to St Paul is a Roman settlement of Glanum, now a national monument of France, and is an excellent archeological site to visit; after being built by the Romans as a strategic settlement, it was influenced in its development by the Hellenic culture that started to spread to this part of France and gradually wound down as a settlement over time. The stone quarry just outside of the settlement is across the road from St Paul and is a site that Van Gogh painted. The local area to Arles is excellent for cycling – its on the border of The Carmargue, a famous area of salt marshes and mud flats, much of which is protected habitats and nature reserves. North of Arles, where St-Remy is located is a natural limestone cliff of Les Alpilles – thankfully, for a cycling like me raised on the flattest parts of England, you can cycle around the cliff to get to where you want to go, but the cliffs make for stunning scenery, too.

Here – Glanum,Arles and the surrounding area, including the seaside!

There’s a lot of love and hope to be found round these parts . . .