Van Gogh’s two pictures of the hospital in Arles—painted while he was recovering after cutting his ear—head to the Courtauld – The Art Newspaper

Within the months after Van Gogh mutilated his ear, he created simply two work of the hospital in Arles by which he stayed. By a stroke of fine fortune, each have been purchased within the Nineteen Twenties by the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart, although from totally different sellers. On Reinhart’s loss of life they turned a part of his museum, which has till not too long ago been prohibited from lending.

This restriction has now been modified, and the primary group of loans are coming to London’s Courtauld Gallery for the exhibition Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Assortment (14 February-26 Might). The museum in Reinhart’s atmospheric villa in Winterthur, simply exterior Zurich, is briefly closed for constructing work and is because of reopen in January 2026. Within the meantime, the work have been out there for the Courtauld present.

The pair of Van Goghs, The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles and The Ward within the Hospital at Arles, might be among the many present’s highlights. Each have been begun within the second half of April 1889, at a time when the artist was sleeping within the hospital, however allowed to color in the course of the day.

This was 4 months after Van Gogh had mutilated his ear, which had precipitated the abrupt departure of his colleague and lodger Paul Gauguin. His bodily wound had healed effectively, however he was mentally scarred by the trauma.

Hospital backyard

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles (April-Might 1889) depicts a part of the arcaded cloister-like courtyard with its vibrant enclosed backyard. The male sufferers have been housed on the higher stage, on the best within the portray, and Van Gogh will need to have beloved to flee from the noisy and crowded ward to benefit from the springtime. It might have been the most effective time of the yr for flowers.

I at all times think about that the person with a hat seated by the sting of the lined terrace (and other than the opposite sufferers) is Van Gogh himself, maybe planning this very image. When he truly painted it, he went to the opposite facet of the courtyard, the south-east nook, so he may embody the male terrace and ward. The feminine sufferers have been within the wing to the left within the image.

Vincent gave an in depth description of the portray in a letter to his sister, Wil: “It’s an arcaded gallery like in Arab buildings, whitewashed. In entrance of those galleries an historical backyard with a pond within the center and eight beds of flowers, forget-me-nots, Christmas roses, anemones, buttercups, wallflowers, daisies and so on. And beneath the gallery, orange timber and oleanders. So it’s a portray chock-full of flowers and springtime greenery. Nevertheless, three black, unhappy tree trunks cross it like snakes, and within the foreground 4 massive unhappy, darkish field bushes.”

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles is such a fastidiously composed and exuberant portray that it’s troublesome to consider it was made by somebody who was struggling as he was. Its composition, with three cropped timber, was impressed by the Japanese prints which Van Gogh so admired. The tree trunks break up the geometry of the flower beds and the 2 wings of the constructing. The goldfish within the central pool add a pleasant contact.

Van Gogh additionally made a drawing of an identical scene, utilizing a thick reed pen. At first look it might seem like the identical view because the portray, however the drawing reveals the courtyard from a distinct angle, making the timber seem much less dominant. Drawn within the first few days of Might 1889, it was a farewell work. The artist left on 8 Might to voluntarily transfer to what was then thought to be an asylum simply exterior Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

We will reveal that the portray of the courtyard backyard nearly turned the primary Van Gogh to be acquired by London’s Nationwide Gallery, even earlier than the Sunflowers (August 1888) and Van Gogh’s Chair (December 1888) have been purchased within the winter of 1923-24.

Nevertheless, in 1922 The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was provided to what was then often known as the Nationwide Gallery Millbank (now Tate) for two,500 guineas (£2,625). This potential acquisition was thought-about by the gallery’s trustees in November.

In January 1923 the trustees have been knowledgeable that the Van Gogh had been “offered at a better value”. The personal collector who outmanoeuvred the London gallery was Reinhart, who acquired it by way of the Paris-based artwork commerce agent Alfred Gold in December 1922. The Reinhart archive means that he paid 150,000 francs (£6,000), greater than twice what had been thought-about by the Nationwide Gallery.

It was to be greater than a century later that The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was lent overseas, to London’s Nationwide Gallery. It went to the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, which closed on 19 January. When the London curators negotiated the mortgage, that they had no concept that that they had nearly purchased the image in 1922.

But when the acquisition had gone forward, then a yr later the Nationwide Gallery trustees would possibly effectively have had second ideas about buying the Sunflowers. This turned out to be a cut price: Sunflowers was purchased in March 1924 for £1,304, half the value which had been mooted for the courtyard backyard image. By this time Samuel Courtauld had offered a considerable fund to purchase Impressionist and Publish-Impressionist work for the gallery.

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was already in London for the Nationwide Gallery’s non permanent present Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers. It can now be going into the Courtauld exhibition on 14 February. There it is going to be joined by Reinhart’s different Van Gogh, The Ward within the Hospital at Arles.

Hospital Ward

Though Van Gogh described the 2 work as “pendants” (a pair), they may hardly be extra totally different in tone and ambiance. The Ward within the Hospital at Arles reveals the boys’s ward, the place Van Gogh would have slept (or tried to sleep, in what will need to have been a loud and uncomfortable atmosphere). The claustrophobic 30-metre lengthy ward is dominated by the double row of curtained beds. On the far finish is a outstanding crucifix, marking the doorway to the chapel.

Vincent additionally described this image in the identical letter to his sister: “A really lengthy ward with the rows of beds with white curtains the place a number of figures of sufferers are shifting. The partitions, the ceiling with the big beams, every thing is white in a lilac white or inexperienced white. Right here and there a window with a pink or vibrant inexperienced curtain. The ground tiled with purple bricks. On the far finish a door surmounted by a crucifix.”

Though the composition was largely completed whereas Van Gogh was on the hospital, six months later he added the range within the foreground and what he described as “a number of gray or black shapes of sufferers” huddled round it. Vincent admitted to his sister that “it’s annoying to color figures with out fashions”—and these additions from his reminiscence will not be solely profitable.

Dr Félix Rey, who had handled Van Gogh after the ear incident, claimed 40 years later that the group of sufferers within the image included “a self-portrait of the painter”. In that case, he’s presumably the person with a straw hat who’s studying a newspaper.

The Ward within the Hospital at Arles was purchased in 1925 for 250,000 francs (then £10,000), after having been owned by Elizabeth Workman, the British spouse of a rich shipbroker. The sale reveals how shortly costs for Van Goghs have been rising within the Nineteen Twenties. On the time plainly Reinhart didn’t realise that he had fortuitously acquired the one two Van Gogh work depicting the Arles hospital.

Hospital to arts centre

The Arles hospital had been transformed from a 1573 orphanage and it continued in operation in its historical constructing till 1986, when a contemporary facility was established on the southern outskirts of the town. Many of the authentic hospital was then transformed right into a cultural centre, with a big library established within the shell of the wing the place the boys’s ward had been positioned.

In 1988 I visited the constructing website and was escorted to the lengthy room which had as soon as served as the boys’s ward, with the chapel door on the finish (the crucifix had gone). I photographed the darkened area, and this picture is the one one of many precise room which has been reproduced within the Van Gogh literature.

The area as soon as occupied by the chapel was taken over and transformed for the municipal archives. It’s there that the few 1888-89 municipal paperwork regarding Van Gogh’s keep at the moment are housed, together with a petition signed by dozens of his neighbours arguing that he was harmful and needs to be dispatched to an asylum. 

Some years in the past, I requested to see the unique petition within the archive. It was an eerie expertise to learn the doc simply metres away from the place Van Gogh’s mattress would have stood.

REVISED: Initially printed on 24 January 2024, this weblog submit was up to date with new info on 5 September 2025.

CORRECTION 27 January: A earlier headline for this text said that Van Gogh’s two footage of the hospital in Arles had not beforehand been proven in London. Actually, The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was additionally a part of the Nationwide Gallery present Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, which has simply closed.