I took this photos as we were entering St Remy de Provence August 2004. St Remy, of course, is most noted for being the place where Van Gogh committed himself voluntarily to an asylum and where he painted most of his greatest works.
Vincent van Gogh arrived in Saint Remy de Provence on 8th May 1889. He had come from Arles and wished to be taken in at the Saint Paul de Mausole hospital. He found the quality of light and the ardent beauty of the landscapes around Saint Remy quite fascinating. The beauty of the surroundings and the pleasure of finding a serene and understanding atmosphere surrounded by the nuns and the personnel who took him in were such that, in the space of a year, he had completed more than 150 paintings and numerous sketches. The Saint Remy period is considered to be one of the major periods in the work of Vincent van Gogh. The best known of his paintings from that period are “the irises”, “starry night”, “olive grove in the evening”, “field of wheat with cypress tree”, “first steps”, “reaper in a field of wheat”, “La siesta”, “The paving stone layers”, “St. Paul hospital”, “Vase of irises on a pink background”, and so on. He left Saint Remy de Provence on 16th of May 1890 to go to Auvers sur Oise where he died little more than two months later on 29th of July 1890. It is possible to visit the central alley, the church and the cloister of Saint Paul de Mausole without feeling a certain wave of emotion.
It really is a beautiful town, one of the few places I saw that really lived up to my expectations. We visited Saint Paul's and I have photos of the olive trees that he painted. They look like they have jumped out of one of his paintings.
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