While at Saint-Remy, Van Gogh created a number of oil copies of black-and-white prints he had by some of his favorite artists, including Rembrandt, Millet, and Delacroix. His choice of which paintings to copy and the manner in which he chose to do so bespeak his fear of and obsession with death; an example of this is Van Gogh's copy of The Raising of Lazarus by Rembrandt van Rijn.
Van Gogh's choice to depict Lazarus has concrete and obvious ties to the specter of death in his life. Lazarus is a biblical character who was resurrected by Christ four days after his death. The subject's tie to death is inherent, and there is also here an undercurrent of the idea of life after death. This is similar in theme to Van Gogh's speculations that in death he would be among the stars, which implies something of a continued existence akin to that of Lazarus, regardless of its level and means.
It is also important to note how Van Gogh has altered the composition of the painting in his copy. He has changed the focus completely, choosing to address Lazarus from a much more concentrated perspective. For Rembrandt, Lazarus himself was only a small part of the composition, and he shared his focus with a handful of other figures. Van Gogh has minimized the human presence in his composition to two figures other than Lazarus; he has completely removed almost all elements of the painting except for this image of death. As he had done in his life at this time, Van Gogh focuses on death, bringing it to the foreground of his painting in an interesting parallel to its position in the foreground of his life.
Furthermore, Van Gogh has altered the setting for his copy of this painting in an extremely significant way: he has moved it outside. While Rembrandt's scene takes place indoors, Van Gogh has brought it out into the warm yellow sunlight, and placed in the background the glowing orb of the sun over an indication of a mountainous landscape. Van Gogh chose to move this scene of death to the outdoors because that is where he saw death; he moved it to a location that was to him more fitting, in a clear manifestation of his asssociation between death and the outdoors.