In May of 1889, Van Gogh admitted himself to the asylum at Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. In his final year of life, he painted some 130 works. Within the first week at the asylum, he began to paint Irises; the subject matter was inspired by the asylum’s garden to the south of the men’s…
Oiran (The Courtesan) Painted in the summer and autumn of 1887, Oiran, also known as The Courtesan, is an image of a Japanese woman copied by Van Gogh from a print by Keisai Eisen which was on the cover of the May 1886 Paris Illustré, a magazine that featured an article about Japan. Van Gogh’s…
The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) & Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige) In the years following the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, Japanese isolation ended and large numbers of Japanese artifacts made their way into Europe. The 1867 World’s Fair, Paris Exposition Universelle, had a display of Japanese art that wooed the crowds and…
