Resting Places
When Paul Gauguin went to stay with Vincent Van Gogh in Arles, south of France, the first place they went painting together was this necropolis, Les Alyscamps, (a Provençal rendering of ‘Elysian Fields’).
Used as a burial site from Roman times onwards, Les Alyscamps became a highly desirable place to be buried. As early as the 4th century there were already several thousand tombs here. Referred to by Dante in the Inferno, it was also an obligatory stage of the pilgrimage of Saint-Jacques de Compostelle. By medieval times, burial in Les Alyscamps had become so desirable that bodies were shipped here from all over Europe.
It was autumn when Van Gogh and Gauguin came here in 1888. The paintings they made on that day are filled with sunlight, and splashed with joyful, bold, autumn colours. Today, another autumn day in 2021, I think of the artists as I walk around taking my photographs. They are long gone, and the place is almost deserted; but the canvases they painted here remain in the world, and the bright yellow and orange leaves are still falling softly on these resting places.
