Corridor in the Asylum

Vincent van Gogh

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Struggles with his mental health led Van Gogh to admit himself to the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, located in the Romanesque monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. Throughout his twelve-month confinement, he continued to paint. In addition to the picturesque wheat fields, olive groves, cypresses, roses, and irises in and around the monastery, he captured this interior view of one of the asylum’s corridors. Despite his colorful palette, the sharply receding corridor feels hollow and haunted. Van Gogh sent the drawing to his brother Theo to give him an impression of his new surroundings. His time in the asylum did not afford the cure the artist had hoped for, and he died by suicide shortly thereafter.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art