Vincent Van Gogh, Bedroom At Arles

Vincent Van Gogh, Bedroom At Arles

In the winter of 1888, Van Gogh traveled to a town named Arles in southern France. Here, he hoped to establish a "Studio of the South" where artists could live and work, creating art in a region that received more direct sunlight than Paris, and that would remind Vincent of the scenery he admired in Japanese prints. The plan was for the artist Paul Gauguin, a friend of Vincent's and his art dealer brother Theo, to join Vincent in Arles. It took a long time to persuade Gauguin to head south, giving Vincent plenty of time to settle in and paint his surroundings, including his bedroom.

When Van Gogh first arrived in Arles, he found a place to stay at a hotel, but he quickly found this to be expensive. It was cheaper and much more ideal for him to rent a house where he and another artist could eat, sleep, and paint. Eventually, he found what would become known as the "Yellow House". A modest two-story building with a front studio, a back kitchen, and a few rooms upstairs. Being on a corner gave the house a slightly skewed floor plan. The front wall and the side walls were not at ninety-degree angles; instead, the front wall went diagonally to be in line with the street below.

On October 16, 1888, Vincent wrote a letter to his brother, describing a painting of his bedroom. Due to the simplicity of the subject and the items in the bedroom, Van Gogh felt that color was needed for the painting to "do its job". Van Gogh's The Bedroom, or The Bedroom in Arles, depicts a room where one sleeps and wants the painting to rest the viewer's mind and imagination.

Upon entering the room, there is a bed on the right. Along the right wall, there is a chair, a table with water on it, and a window looking out onto the street. On the left wall, there's another chair and a door leading to a second bedroom. The Bedroom in Arles demonstrates Van Gogh's knowledge of color theory with blue against orange, red against green. Inspired by the Japanese prints that Van Gogh studied, he has removed the shadows from the painting. The absence of shadows, along with the distorted perspective, makes some objects appear to be falling or not steady. This is not entirely the result of a hasty execution or a lack of skill. The single angle of the distant wall results in the furniture not aligning perfectly.

Van Gogh must have liked the painting. He included a sketch of The Bedroom in a letter to his brother, and the very next day he wrote to Gauguin and included a sketch in that letter as well. When the picture he sent to his brother was damaged in a flood, he revisited the subject and painted it again the following year while he was in Saint-Remy. Later on, still wanting to explore the subject, he drew a third version for his mother. In all three paintings, the composition is almost the same, with minor changes in detail and color.