Meet Van Gogh’s Doctor

By Sheramy Bundrick

Early the morning of 24 December 1888, a severely wounded man was brought to the Hôtel-Dieu of Arles for treatment. On duty: Félix Rey (1867–1932), a young intern completing his thesis from the University of Montpellier. The patient: Vincent van Gogh, who the night before had sliced part of his left ear with a razor and taken it to a prostitute, and who now suffered from not only blood loss but hallucinations. A policeman gave the severed ear to the doctor, and according to Dr. Rey in a later interview, it was kept in a jar of alcohol in his office until one day it was stolen.

After fifteen days in the hospital, Vincent returned to his yellow house on the Place Lamartine, having recovered against all odds and expectations. Not long after, he painted the doctor who’d shown such compassion and medical skill; comparison with a photograph reveals Vincent captured Dr. Rey’s bourgeois bonhomie, his elegant clothes and cravat, and his stylish beard. But although Dr. Rey accepted the portrait as the gift it was, in later years he admitted he never liked it. In fact, his mother used the painting to patch a hole in the chicken-coop, until it was sold to an artist in 1901.

Vincent spoke often of Dr. Rey in letters to his brother Theo. It was he who looked after van Gogh during the subsequent two hospitalizations in Arles: a brief stay in February 1889 and a third stint lasting from early March until early May, following a petition from the townspeople who feared Vincent’s illness. While not a specialist in mental conditions, Dr. Rey evidently had an enlightened attitude and advocated against Vincent’s forced incarceration. When Vincent decided himself to enter the asylum at nearby Saint-Rémy, Dr. Rey supported him and helped ease the transition. Along with the postman Joseph Roulin and the Protestant Reverend Frédéric Salles, the doctor was one of van Gogh’s few friends during the last months he spent in Arles.

Today the former Hôtel-Dieu is a cultural center known as the Espace Van Gogh, and the square outside commemorates Vincent’s doctor: the Place Félix Rey.

Further reading:

M. Bailey, “Drama at Arles: New Light on Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Mutilation,” Apollo 162 (Sept 2005): 30–41.

J. Hulsker, “Critical Days in the Hospital at Arles,” Vincent: The Journal of the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh 1 (1970): 20–31.

R. Pickvance, Van Gogh in Arles (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984).

Sheramy Bundrick, author of Sunflowers (release date October 13), is an art historian and professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. She grew up in the Atlanta area, where she earned her Ph.D. from Emory University, and spent a year in New York as a research fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

IMAGE: Portrait of Dr. Rey, January 1889, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow