Garden of the Asylum

The walled garden at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole became, through Van Gogh's repeated paintings of it during 1889, one of the most intensely documented private spaces in the history of European art — a small enclosed garden transformed by sustained attention into a kind of paradise and prison simultaneously. He painted it in different seasons, at different hours, from different angles, and in different moods: sometimes with the quality of a peaceful refuge, sometimes with the churning energy of barely contained anxiety. The garden's confinement was also its gift: within its walls Van Gogh had complete visual access to all the subjects he needed — trees, flowers, overgrown corners, the changing sky above — without the need to venture into a world that could overwhelm him. His repeated returns to the same physical space anticipated the serial observation of Monet's garden paintings at Giverny, though Van Gogh's serial impulse was more psychological than optical. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Van Gogh uses the enclosed garden to create a composition dense with overlapping forms — trees, shrubs, paths, and sky visible only in fragments through the foliage canopy. Brushwork is maximally energetic in the vegetation passages, with every leaf and stem rendered in its own distinct directional mark.