Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
1889, in the hospital grounds
The record dates The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital with Figure to 1889 and names the institution in the title. Fifteen works in this catalogue name Saint-Paul or a hospital, fourteen of them dated 1889 — which makes this one of the most tightly placed groups in the whole ten-year arc, tied to a single institution in a single year.
What the record gives
The canvas is 61 x 50 cm, an upright, and it is held by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. The measured palette resolves to ochre as the single dominant family — a comparatively subdued reading in a year where yellow dominates 76 of 116 works and green 53.
Saint-Paul as a place, not a saint
The name in the title is the name of a building. Saint-Paul-de-Mausole is the hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence where the record places van Gogh's fourth period, and the works that carry the name are records of its garden, its corridors, its entrance hall and its grounds. The distinction matters for a catalogue that indexes by title: the word "Saint" here is part of a place name, and nothing in this entry concerns a religious subject.
