Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
1889, and still in Arles
The record dates The Courtyard of the Hospital in Arles to 1889 and names Arles in the title. That pairing is worth stopping on, because 1889 is the year the catalogue's chronology hands over from Arles to Saint-Rémy: the year opens in one town and continues in the other. Three works dated 1889 still name Arles, against twenty-five dated 1888, and this is one of them.
What the record gives
The canvas measures 73 x 92 cm and is held by the Oskar Reinhart Foundation in Winterthur, which holds four works in this catalogue. The measured palette resolves to yellow, the dominant family in 76 of the 116 works dated 1889.
A companion in the same collection
The record also holds Ward in the Hospital at Arles, dated 1889, in the same Winterthur collection: an interior to set against this courtyard, two views of one institution, both from the year the period changes. Whether they were painted in the same weeks is not something the record states. What it does state is that the Arles subjects thin out sharply after 1888, and that hospital titles — first at Arles, then at Saint-Paul — take their place.
