At Eternity's Gate

At Eternity's Gate, catalogued by the Kröller-Müller Museum as Sorrowing Old Man ('At Eternity's Gate'), is an oil painting on canvas by Vincent van Gogh, made in May 1890 at the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and now in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. It measures 81.8 × 65.5 cm.

The image goes back eight years. In The Hague in 1882 Van Gogh made a series of studies of Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland, an old pensioner and war veteran living in an almshouse, among them a pencil drawing called Worn Out that shows him with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He turned it into a lithograph a few days later; of the seven known impressions, one is annotated At Eternity's Gate. Writing to Theo at the time, he said that the unspoken expression of such an old man, sitting quietly by his hearth, seemed to him strong evidence for the existence of God and an eternity, something noble that could not be meant for the worms.

From 22 February 1890 Van Gogh suffered his longest and most severe relapse, lasting until late April. As he recovered, he wanted to start work quickly and chose to rework several of his early figure drawings, curious how they would turn out in his new style. The painting is not a literal copy in colour: according to the museum he adjusted the composition, probably took the chair and stove from the asylum interior, and may have asked a patient to pose. The old man, in blue work clothes, sits bent forward on a yellow chair beside a low fire, his face hidden in his clenched fists.

The picture was completed about two months before Van Gogh's death. The theologian Kathleen Powers Erickson has argued that the title turns an image of apparent despair into an expression of his lasting faith in God and eternity.