Portrait of a Patient in Saint-Paul Hospital

Catalogue numbers: F 703, JH 1832.

Restricted to motifs selected from within the asylum, van Gogh began a series of portraits. He did six of them at Saint-Rémy, and they stand out as isolated yet imposing achievements of the art of portrait painting. Three of the six (F 626, 528, 627) are self-portrait. The other portraits are the Portrait of Trabuc (F 629), Portrait of Trabuc's Wife (F 631), Portrait of a Patient (F 703).

Van Gogh painted the portrait of this patient because he was a compassionate fellow creature. The man's blue eyes are fixed in an imaginary world. His shirt and jacket are done in thick, furrowing brushstrokes, and his face is a knotty, craggy mass of palpable, earthy matter. The upper part of the painting is unfinished.