Bedroom in Arles

The bedroom in Arles and Bedroom is the title of three oil paintings and two drawings in letters that were created by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh in Arles 1888-1889 in the so-called Yellow House.

Image description

The room is very simple furnishings, a bed, two chairs, a table. Everything looks very rustic and almost bald. There is no person in the room. The pictures show how the painter lived and what friendships he cultivated. On the walls hang three portraits ( including a self-portrait ) and a mirror.

The colors are typical of Gogh, very thick and coarse coated with thick black dividing lines between. Although the painter said it should be a picture in which the eye finds tranquility, the view jumps repeatedly between the high contrast back and forth. The characteristic style follows the shape of the objects, thus different directions come into the picture. The parquet flees back, the edge of the bed swings up and down. The moldings of the door do not fit in the lines of the vanishing point and the bed extends into the door frame, which is not due to negligence of the painter, but can be read as an indication of the incipient insanity - the outlines of reality disintegrate gradually into each other.

Above the bed hung with portraits of Eugène Boch and Paul -Eugène Milliet.

The image should be the contrast to Van Gogh's "Night Café", which has a sharp contrast between red and green. Here the painter used the complementary colors yellow ocher and violet, which are more soothing than the signal colors.

The various paintings are in the Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum, the Musée d' Orsay and the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the sketches in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Vincent's Bedroom Letter dated October 17, 1888

Vincent's Bedroom in Arles 1889 Musée d' Orsay, Paris

Van Gogh's Bedroom 1889 Art Institute of Chicago