Focus on this artwork and discuss the Copy after Gustave Doré.
Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré) was made by Van Gogh at Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy.  This work like the reprises of Eugène Delacroix and Rembrandt's works, evokes Van Gogh's sense of isolation, like an imprisoned or dying man.  Although sad, there is a sense of comfort offered.  In a letter to his brother, Theo, Van Gogh mentioned that he found making it and Men Drinking (after Daumier) quite difficult.			
			
		
		
			
			
		
Following Van Gogh's funeral, Émile Bernard wrote of the studies around his coffin:  "On the walls of the room where his body was laid out all his last canvases were hung making a sort of halo for him and the brilliance of the genius that radiated from them made this death even more painful for us artists who were there."  Of the Doré reprise, he said, "Convicts walking in a circle surrounded by high prison walls, a canvas inspired by Doré of a terrifying ferocity and which is also symbolic of his end. Wasn't life like that for him, a high prison like this with such high walls - so high…and these people walking endlessly round this pit, weren't they the poor artists, the poor damned souls walking past under the whip of Destiny?"
Theo Émile Bernard Saint-Rémy Rembrandt's after Gustave Doré Saint-Paul asylum Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré) Rembrandt Delacroix Eugène Delacroix