Vincent van Gogh & St-Remy’s Monastery

Posted on by JR

Remember the photo of St. Paul Monastery in St-Remy that I put in my very first post? It’s the iconic photo of the monastery with the lavender fields in front. After we went to the Carrieres de Lumiere show, we drove to nearby St-Remy-de-Provence to visit St. Paul Monastery and Hospital where Vincent van Gogh spent a year getting treatment near the end of his life. St. Paul Monastery and Hospital is still a working psychiatric hospital and van Gogh fans are able to see the monastery, chapel, cloisters, gardens, and a re-creation of the room where he lived in 1889 and 1990. The walkway down to the monastery and the gardens in the back are dotted with many large copies of his paintings. Amazingly, in his 53 weeks here he completed 143 paintings and more than 100 drawings. Van Gogh left St-Remy in the spring of 1890 to enter the care of another doctor whom he hoped could help stabilize his mental condition. In July of 1890 he shot himself in a nearby wheat field. He was 37. In those last 70 days of his life, he produced a painting a day.

The walkway down from the parking lot to the monastery was lined with the flowers that were the subjects of many of van Gogh’s paintings..
Purple and white lilacs were among the flowers that lined the walkways.
Reproducrtions of van Gogh’s paintings lined the walls of the walkways.
Also along the walkway is this sculpture of van Gogh carrying sunflowers.
Van Gogh’s The Starry Night also hangs on a wall along the entrance.
To the left is the chapel and on the right is the monastery.
The cloisters in the center of the monastery.
Van Gogh’s room was very basic: a bed, a chair, a desk, and his easel and painting supplies.
In the gardens behind the monastery, this pink tree stands out in a large bed of irises about to bloom. Note van Gogh’s paintings on the wall.
Probably most surprising to me were the lavender fields. In the photos I’ve seen, they look huge. But they’re not. On the right is the biggest plot and there are 2 much smaller plots nearby. It’s all in the perspective. Of course none of them are blooming yet.
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Published by JR

One thought on “Vincent van Gogh & St-Remy’s Monastery”

  1. It’s hard to imagine what Van Gogh might have accomplished had he lived longer. His paintings are beautiful and in some of them you can see the mental torment he suffered through.

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