Portrait of the superintendent Trabuc in the Hospital Saint-Paul

Painted in 1889 at Saint-Rémy, this portrait of Charles-Elzéard Trabuc — the chief warden of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole — is one of Van Gogh's most penetrating late portraits. Trabuc, a former soldier and head of the asylum's non-medical staff, had authority over the patients' daily lives, and Van Gogh portrayed him with characteristic psychological depth. He described Trabuc in a letter to Theo as 'a man of the old soldier type,' capturing both his military bearing and a certain inner melancholy. Now in Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Switzerland, this portrait is among the finest of Van Gogh's asylum-period figure paintings.

Van Gogh renders Trabuc with the controlled intensity of his best portraits — the face modeled in clear, directional strokes that suggest volume without academic smoothing. The background is painted in the swirling, animated manner of his Saint-Rémy work. The dark uniform contrasts with the more complex treatment of the face and hands.