Focus on this artwork and analyze the Events leading up to stay at the Saint-Paul hospital.
Following the incident with Paul Gauguin in Arles in December 1888, in which van Gogh cut off virtually all of his left ear, he was hospitalized in Arles twice over a few months. Although some, such as Johanna van Gogh, Paul Signac and posthumous speculation by doctors Doiteau & Leroy, have said that van Gogh just removed part of his ear lobe and maybe a little more, art historian Rita Wildegans maintains that without exception, all of the witnesses from Arles said that he removed the entire left ear. In January 1889, he returned to the Yellow House, where he was living, but spent the following month between hospital and home suffering from hallucinations and delusions that he was being poisoned. In March 1889, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople, who called him "fou roux" (the redheaded madman). Paul Signac visited him in hospital and Van Gogh was allowed home in his company. In April 1889, he moved into rooms owned by Dr. Félix Rey, after floods damaged paintings in his own home. Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant." Finally, in May 1889, he left Arles and traveled to the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Paul Signac Saint-Rémy-de-Provence hospitalized Saint-Rémy Dr. Félix Rey Arles asylum Paul Gauguin Johanna van Gogh Provence left Yellow House