Why there’s never been a better time to discover van Gogh’s Provence

As many of the painter’s works go on display in London, our writer explains how best to explore the French countryside that inspired them

The little yellow house with green shutters was just by a bend in the river Rhône in Arles. There was a café next door, a square and a small park opposite, and lots of delightful walks out into the nearby Provençal countryside. Could there be a better place to enjoy a painting holiday in the South of France?
When Vincent van Gogh – who had just moved to Arles to escape the intensity of the Paris art scene – managed to obtain a short lease on the house in the summer of 1888, he was delighted. “It’s painted yellow outside, whitewashed inside – in the full sunshine,” he enthused in a letter to his brother, Theo. And he celebrated by making what was to become one of his most famous paintings – a prospect of the house glowing under a deep blue sky with a railway engine chuffing over a bridge in the background.
In those first few weeks in the yellow house, he also painted the sunflower series and the first picture of his bedroom. But what he really wanted was the company of fellow artists. Eventually, in late October, his friend Paul Gauguin moved down from Paris to join him. 
At first, things seem to have gone swimmingly. “He’s a really great artist and a really excellent friend,” van Gogh wrote of his new housemate. The two artists ate, drank and painted together. But Gauguin – by nature a carefree bon viveur – seems to have found van Gogh’s intensity, not to say his mental instability, hard to cope with. Within a few weeks, the tension between the two ratcheted up to such a point that, on December 23, something in van Gogh’s mind snapped. 
The details are not clear, but he seems at first to have threatened his friend with a razor and then used it to cut off at least part of his own ear, which he wrapped up and delivered to a worker in his favourite brothel. Gauguin fled back to Paris. Van Gogh was hospitalised and never fully recovered from the breakdown, soon moving to a mental asylum in nearby Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. 
The pleasure of visiting van Gogh’s Provence is not, of course, to re-experience the horrors of that day in December 1888. Despite the artist’s demons, it was here in Arles and also later in St-Rémy, that he produced what have since become some of the most popular and most reproduced images in Western art. 
For many of us, they still form our abiding impression of the south of France: the deep green spears of the cypress trees; the frothing white of the almond blossom; the gnarled, twisted trunks of the olive groves; and the intense, yellow heat and brilliant light and colour of summer. 
You won’t find the original paintings in the south of France – though you can see many of them at the van Gogh exhibition in the National Gallery in London, which opens on September 14. Travel down to Provence, however, and you can still enjoy the landscapes, the colours and the sunshine that inspired them (just choose your travelling companions carefully). 
Though the original Yellow House no longer exists (it was destroyed during the war), you can still find its original location on the edge of the town, near the railway station. It is worth seeking out, because just across the road is the bend in the river where van Gogh made his first Starry Night painting. The view is still recognisable, though don’t expect to see the Plough constellation in the position he painted it – he moved it by 180 degrees for dramatic effect. 
Perhaps the most evocative and unchanged of the city views is the café in the Place du Forum. His Café Terrace at Night evokes the brilliant glow of the café’s lantern under a bright yellow awning, with a starry sky forming a deep blue canopy above the city streets beyond. The café, now named after the artist, is still there, and the atmosphere in the evenings is uncannily similar.
It’s also worth seeking out the Alyscamps, once a Roman necropolis, now a city park which was painted by both van Gogh and Gauguin. And finally, there is the old hospital (the Hôtel-Dieu-Saint-Esprit) in the centre of the city, to which the Dutchman was admitted after cutting off his ear. The courtyard (which is open to the public) has been replanted to reflect how van Gogh painted it in the late winter of 1889.
There’s plenty more to see in Arles, of course – though, strangely, van Gogh does not seem to have been interested in the city’s historic sites. For example, though the centre is dominated by the great Roman amphitheatre, a must for any sightseer, it appears only once in his paintings. The wonderful 12th-century church of Saint Trophime, with its Romanesque portico representing the apocalypse, and beautiful cloisters with intricately carved biblical scenes, is also one of the great attractions of Arles, though apparently held no appeal for van Gogh.
A few months after van Gogh’s hospitalisation in Arles – once his ear had healed – brother Theo arranged for him to be admitted to the Asylum of St Paul, a residential psychiatric hospital in a former monastery in nearby Saint-Remy. We don’t know for sure what caused the breakdown in his mental health, though he was likely suffering from a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 
And although the year he spent being treated in the asylum did not improve his condition fundamentally, the surrounding landscape did inspire another surge of creativity. He made some 150 paintings during his stay there, including some of his most famous images of olive groves and cypress trees; irises and almond blossom; views of the Alpilles mountains; and his second Starry Night painting.
The hospital still operates, but it has now been divided – owing to demand from van Gogh enthusiasts – into two, with one wing and the walled garden kept private for the residents and the rest open to visitors. It remains a wonderful and atmospheric place to visit. The medieval courtyards, cloisters and gardens are a short walk from the town and surrounded by olive trees and the wooded scrub which, on a hot still day, rings with the rasping of cicadas.
Van Gogh’s simply furnished bedroom has been recreated in one of the monastery cells, and though the furniture is not original, you get both a sense of the austerity in which he lived and, from the window, virtually the same view of the gardens and the mountains that he found so inspirational. 
Be sure to take some time to explore the landscape around the hospital. There are dozens of footpaths through the fields and woods, where van Gogh himself spent many hours exploring. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact spots where he set up his easel, but every now and again you will stumble across a reproduction of a painting in a place where he may once have stood.
Saint-Paul de Mausole, St Rémy-de-Provence; open daily
The average journey time from London to Avignon (about 25 miles from Arles) by Eurostar is roughly six hours, changing in Paris, with fares from £140 return. 
In Arles, L’Hôtel Particulier (0033 490 525140) has doubles from £326 per night. In Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Le Saint Rémy (0033 484 510451) has doubles from £289 per night.
For more hotel options in Provence, see our recommendations here.
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers is at the National Gallery until January 19 2025, standard admission £24. 

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