Visiting Van Gogh's Asylum
Hello from Europe! Since I’ve been traveling a lot this fall, I have not been able to sit still and write as much as I would like, so I’m going to make up for it by sending you several entries in a row this coming week. (I’m also very aware of your kind $ contributions to this newsletter, so I’m going to keep more entries coming through the end of the year). Writing these entries helps me balance out and control the manic “I should be working” thought that’s always in the back of my mind, so I need to devote more time to doing this anyway.
After a research/archival trip to Geneva, Switzerland to look at records of the International Labor Organization (ILO), I used the following weekend to take the train to Provence to visit a place I’d always wanted to see - the Saint Paul monastery/asylum in the town of Saint-Remy, where Vincent Van Gogh agreed to be committed from May 1889 to May 1890. Decreed in 1852 as a private asylum for “the insane, for 50 men and 50 women,” it was overseen by various doctors and laypeople associated with the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul and then of Saint Joseph de Vesseaux. I’ve loved Van Gogh’s work since I was a teen, and remain fascinated by his ability to create such beautiful, texturally unique work when he was in so much mental agony.
It was a sunny, cold day in the 30s when I decided to visit Saint-Remy. My home base was the beautiful, walled city of Avignon. From the Avignon train/bus station you can take a 55-minute bus to Saint-Remy for a couple of euros each way. I had never been to Provence, so I spent the whole bus ride paying attention to the vegetation and trees—wheat fields, dark green cypress trees, trees tinted with autumn golds and burnt oranges, pruned almond trees, and short trees with knotty, thick branches (I still can’t figure out their name) sped by my bus window. Two white horses that looked almost ghostly trotted together around a field.