I recently visited an exhibition of some 60 paintings and drawings created by Vincent Van Gogh in two years towards the end of his life (1888-90). (‘Poets and Lovers’ is at the National Gallery, London until 19 January 2025.)

‘It’s my plan to go to the south for a while, as soon as I can, where there’s even more colour and even more sun.’
Vincent Van Gogh, October 1887

In February 1888, aged 34, Van Gogh left Paris to live and work in the south of France. Settling in Arles, he rented the four-roomed Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine for 15 francs a month. Inspired by the beautiful local scenery and the ravishing light, he embarked on a period of industrious creativity, whilst also nurturing thoughts of establishing an ‘artists' home’, a communal ‘studio of the south.’

‘The painter of the future is a colourist such as there hasn’t been before.’

Here’s the Yellow House with its bright green shutters and door, a steam train passing over a bridge in the distance. We step inside and see the painter’s pipe and tobacco sitting on a rustic chair; and his terracotta tiled bedroom with its limewashed walls. In the nearby park, two young lovers walk hand-in-hand under the shade of a spreading fir tree.

Now we regard Arles from across the River Rhone on a starry night. A team of stevedores unload barges laden with coal. In the surrounding countryside a sower is silhouetted against an enormous golden sun. A lone ploughman tills the fields and grape pickers labour in the vineyard.  

‘One can speak poetry just by arranging colours well, just as one can say comforting things in music.’

Van Gogh took real views as a starting point, but chose not to reproduce them faithfully. He freely added imagined figures and buildings; changed angles and viewpoints; intensified colours. He sought to convey meaning rather than actuality.

‘To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun.’

In December 1888 Van Gogh had a breakdown and cut off his left ear. He was admitted to the local hospital a number of times over the following months, and in May he checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy, a former monastery nearly 20 miles from Arles. Allocated two cells with barred windows, he used one of them as a studio. Although experiencing further episodes that summer and winter, he continued to work.  

‘I have a terrible clarity of mind at times, when nature is so lovely these days, and then I’m no longer aware of myself and painting comes to me as if in a dream.’

Van Gogh painted the arcaded courtyard; the overgrown hospital garden with its rows of pines and reddish soil; sinuous tree trunks, covered in dense undergrowth, bathed in dappled light. He painted flowering orchards and fields of bright red poppies; vivid blue irises, pink roses and chrome yellow sunflowers; blooming oleanders in a majolica jug.
 
‘I’m attempting something more heartbroken and therefore more heartbreaking.’

One gets the impression that, despite or perhaps because of his poor mental health, he was experiencing life more intensely; seeing more clearly; feeling more profoundly. His skies were the deepest blue. His sunsets were yellow, ultramarine and mauve. His suns were blazing orange and glowing gold. The wheatfields swayed under the mistral, the mountains and ravines quivered in the searing Provencal heat. The cypresses were aflame, the olive groves swooned, and the clouds rolled in over the hills like breaking waves.  

He achieved these dynamic effects with bold dashes, dots and swirls; with rippling strokes and hatching. It was a kind of magic.

‘I want a far-off thing like a vague memory softened by time.’

Perhaps this is a reminder to us all that we should look for the beauty that surrounds us; that we should regard the world more intensely; that even at our lowest ebb, in our darkest hour, nature provides respite, creativity offers relief.

‘Instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite.’

Sadly for Van Gogh, the respite was short-lived. In May 1890 he left the asylum and returned north to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. In July he shot himself in the chest, dying two days later.

'Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do.
Yeah, they were all yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called yellow.
So then I took my turn.
Oh, what a thing to have done,
And it was all yellow.
Your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful.
And you know, you know I love you so.
You know I love you so.’
Coldplay, ‘Yellow’ (C Martin / G Berryman / W Champion / J Buckland)

No. 492