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Benjamin Blake Evemy walked Vincent’s path in Southern France, chronicling the artist’s initial hopes and eventual descent into insanity

On October 23, 1888, following a heartfelt invitation from Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin finally arrived in Arles. Vincent longed for artistic companionship, and his dream of forming a colony of artists in Arles was swiftly becoming a newfound reality. Van Gogh had been filled with an excitable anticipation since Gauguin had accepted the invitation some months previous, and he had set about preparations for his friend’s visit with unbridled enthusiasm. On advice from Joseph Roulin, the station’s postal supervisor, Van Gogh had purchased two beds for the Yellow House. In November, the pair of artists painted together in Vincent’s atelier, the results including Gauguin’s The Painter of Sunflowers, and Van Gogh’s Memory of the Garden at Etten, which he painted after Gauguin’s encouragement that he should paint by memory.

“There are colors which cause each other to shine brilliantly, which form a couple, which complete each other like man and woman.”

Falling Autumn Leaves, 1888, oil on canvas, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Alyscamps, present day, photograph by the author

The pair’s first outdoor expedition was to Alyscamps. A sprawling necropolis dating back to Roman times, with ancient arches, heavy tombs, and a stretching tree-lined road frequented by meandering locals, Alyscamps was the perfect place for artistic inspiration. Van Gogh painted several depictions of the city of the dead, ironically featuring the living. Van Gogh, for all the beautifully rendered paintings of landscapes he created during his lifetime, was immensely interested in people, and even being in a place of such profound reflection as Alyscamps, he was drawn to those whose hearts still beat. Famous throughout the rest of France, the poplar-lined alley was a celebrated lover’s lane, and even though the courting couples in Van Gogh’s pendants Falling Autumn Leaves are a figment of the artist’s unrestrained imagination, they are what truly breathes life into the autumnal scenes. Vincent viewed the creation of the paintings as a collaborative effort between himself and Gauguin, for he knew that when artists work within close proximity to each other, it is almost inevitable that influence will flow between the respective creative spirits of those involved. Van Gogh also executed the paintings on Gauguin’s jute, a tangible manifestation of these shared creative bonds. Alyscamps sits the same it has for countless years, with the addition of surprisingly impressive modern art installations.  

Unfortunately, these times of shared creativity and tranquility were to be relatively short-lived. In December, Van Gogh and Gauguin travelled to Montpellier to visit the Musée Fabre, an excursion that would begin to sever the ties between the two artists, with heated arguments regarding the work of certain painters. Catastrophe was waiting when the pair returned to Arles. In Vincent’s eyes, Gauguin was an equal, a fellow artist on the same sun-kissed plane, but Gauguin was arrogant, domineering, and did not treat Van Gogh as such. Frustration simmered strong. The fights grew worse. Vincent feared that his friend would abandon him, causing great anxiety and plaguing his nerves. Something was contorting like cypresses in the ever-returning Mistral, and all that tension had no option but to seek escape any way that it could.

"Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant."

Garden of the Hospital in Arles, 1889, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur

Garden of the Old Hospital in Arles, present day, photograph by the author

The exact events that transpired on December 23, 1888, are to this day not fully known. Although it seems more than likely that Vincent sensed that Gauguin was planning on leaving the Yellow House, and the thought of being abandoned finally became too much for the deeply sensitive artist. Gauguin stated fifteen years after the incident that there had been several threats of violence leading up to it, and when he left to take a walk that night, Vincent followed him, and came at him wielding an opened straight razor.

Distraught, Vincent returned alone to his room at the Yellow House, where he was plagued by phantom voices. He took the razor, and severed all, or at least part, of his left ear. Bleeding severely, he bandaged the fresh wound, before wrapping the severed ear in a piece of paper. He then made his way to a local brothel that both himself and Gauguin frequented, and delivered the blood-soaked package to a young lady working at the nocturnal establishment. Van Gogh was found unconscious the following morning by a policeman and taken to the Hôtel-Dieu-Saint-Espirit – the hospital in Arles.

Once at the hospital, Vincent was treated by the young doctor Félix Rey (whose portrait he painted in January 1889, but unfortunately the doctor was not particularly taken with the piece and it was used to repair a hole in a chicken coop before being given away). The severed ear was brought to the hospital, but as too much time had passed since Van Gogh had taken the razor to it, Rey did not attempt to reattach it. Vincent had absolutely no recollection of the incident and was diagnosed with “acute mania with generalized delirium.” Several days following the fated night, local police issued an order that the self-mutilated artist be placed in hospital care. Gauguin notified Vincent’s brother Theo, who immediately left Paris for Arles on a night train. He arrived on Christmas day and found his brother semi-lucid.

Despite their tumultuous relationship, Vincent repeatedly asked to see Gauguin. But his friend had advised one of the gendarmes in charge of the case to “be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him.” He then fled Arles. He never saw Vincent again, although they would continue to write to one another. The garden of the hospital in Arles has been restored to its former glory in what is now called the Espace Van Gogh.

On January 7, 1889, Vincent returned to the Yellow House. He would spend the following month between there and the hospital, plagued by hallucinations and paranoid delusions of being poisoned. That March, police closed the Yellow House after a petition from a number of townsfolk, who referred to Van Gogh as “le fou roux” – the redheaded madman. Consequently, Vincent returned to the hospital. In March, he relocated to rooms owned by Dr. Rey, as flooding had pervaded the Yellow House, causing water damage to a number of his paintings. Two months later, Vincent left Arles and checked himself in at the asylum in Saint-Rémy.

Vincent’s Room at Saint-Rémy, photograph by the author

Despite the fact that Arles was not always particularly kind to Vincent, the city now celebrates the fact that the artist once resided there. The numerous sights where Van Gogh painted his iconic pieces, inadvertently immortalizing the city, are all signposted, and the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles has its permanent home within its sun-soaked streets.

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