Vincent's Bedroom in Arles

Appreciation

Vincent's Bedroom in Arles Nederland Vincent van Gogh Gallery and Appreciation

Vincent's Bedroom in Arles is one of the artist's best known paintings. The striking colours, unusual perspective and familiar subject matter create a work that is not only among Van Gogh's most popular, but also one that he himself held as one of his own personal favourites.

The painting shown here is actually one five versions: three oil on canvas and two letter sketches (see Table 1 below). This specific painting, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, was the first of the three oils that Van Gogh produced and, some would argue, the best executed. Furthermore, because Van Gogh was so pleased with the painting he described it at great length in letters to his family. In fact, Vincent describes this painting in no less than thirteen letters and, as a result, a great deal is known about the artist's own feelings about the work.

In a letter to his brother, Theo, Vincent wrote:

My eyes are still tired by then I had a new idea in my head and here is the sketch of it. Another size 30 canvas. This time it's just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination.

The walls are pale violet. The floor is of red tiles.

The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheets and pillows very light greenish-citron.

The coverlet scarlet. The window green.

The toilet table orange, the basin blue.

The doors lilac.

And that is all--there is nothing in this room with its closed shutters.

The broad lines of the furniture again must express inviolable rest. Portraits on the walls, and a mirror and a towel and some clothes.

The frame--as there is no white in the picture--will be white.

This by way of revenge for the enforced rest I was obliged to take.

I shall work on it again all day, but you see how simple the conception is. The shadows and the cast shadows are suppressed; it is painted in free flat tints like the Japanese prints. It is going to be a contrast to, for instance, the Tarascon diligence and the night café.

Letter 554

While it's true that Van Gogh often wrote about his works in detail, the florid description of the colours and subject matter of Vincent's Bedroom in Arles is unusually involved. Furthermore, Vincent even suggests a specific frame for the painting which clearly shows that the artist envisioned it proudly on display.

Background

Even with three painted versions it's a relatively straightforward process to pinpoint the details about the origin of this particular painting--thanks to Van Gogh's voluminous letters to Theo. In the letter cited above Van Gogh describes the work as a "size 30" (large) canvas, so this would immediately eliminate the Musée d'Orsay version which is significantly smaller. Could the Chicago version of the bedroom painting be the original, however, and not the Van Gogh Museum version? Jan Hulsker, Van Gogh scholar and expert on the letters argues to the contrary:

As the two others, differing only in very minor details, are size-30 canvases, one of them must be the replica made in Saint-Rémy. The fact that [JH] 1608 is the original, painted in Arles, is confirmed by a detail in the picture itself. In Letter 553b, written October 4--only about ten days before the painting was made--Vincent informed his friend Boch: "Your portrait is hanging in my bedroom, together with that of Milliet, the Zouave, which I have just completed." The painting on the far right above the bed in 1608 must indeed be what he referred to as the portrait of Milliet, for the bright red of the kepi can be made out against the green of the background just below the upper edge of the picture. In the later replica, 1771, this figure has been replaced by a portrait of a woman.

Furthermore, now that the profiled work has been established as the original, it can be accurately dated thanks to Van Gogh's Letter 555 (17 October 1888) in which he wrote "I am adding a line to tell you that this afternoon I finished the canvas representing the bedroom." It's rare (but always welcome) that Van Gogh's paintings can be dated with such precision. A recent article in Sky and Telescope (April, 2001) about The White House at Night is another example in which the completion of a Van Gogh work can be narrowed down to a matter of a few hours.

Style

The bright and bold use of colour in Vincent's Bedroom in Arles is typical of the vibrant palette he began to use beginning late in his Paris period. Yellow was Van Gogh's favourite colour throughout his Arles and Saint-Rémy period--whether outdoors in wheatfields under the Provencal sun or indoor works such as the bedroom.

Probably the most striking and unusual aspect of the painting is the peculiar perspective. The work is unrealistic in its warped portrayal of the bedroom, with the subjects skewed downward toward the viewer. This is one of the aspects that makes the painting so unique and easily recognizable. The perspective seems extreme, but later in his career as an artist Van Gogh was not only rebelling against the muted colours of the Dutch artists of the time, he was also breaking free from the confines of the perspective frame which dictated a precise and realistic approach to a work's perspective. Van Gogh often rejected conventional perspective in the latter half of his career as an artist--particularly in many of his Arles paintings (see The Seated Zouave and The Night Cafe in the Place Lamartine in Arles, for example).

Interestingly, the unusual perspective isn't necessarily explained solely because of Van Gogh's conscious stylistic choice. Ronald Pickvance in his book Van Gogh in Arles suggests an explanation based more on architectural fact than artistic preference. Pickvance explains that the very shape of Van Gogh's room was unusual and, as a result, Van Gogh's portrayal of it is actually more realistic than the viewer might initially imagine. The diagram at right shows the actual shape of Van Gogh's room.2 Note the slant to the outer wall which, when depicted in Van Gogh's painting, adds to the unusual perspective.

Other versions

As mentioned, Van Gogh produced five versions of his Bedroom in Arles: three oils and two letter sketches. The two copies of the original painting were produced while Van Gogh was under voluntary confinement at the mental asylum in Saint-Rémy. Van Gogh chose to paint a number of copies of his earlier works while in the asylum--perhaps as a reflection of his mental state at the time. His copies of L'Arlesienne (Madame Ginoux), for example, may suggest the loneliness of his life at the asylum as he reflected fondly on the few friends he had made in Arles.

Some have argued that Vincent's original bedroom painting encapsulates all of his dreams and aspirations during the first several months in Arles. Van Gogh had hoped for form an artist's colony in the south of France--a cooperative community in which painters could learn from each other and support their collective goals. When Vincent rented his Yellow House he took the first step toward realizing this goal. The bedroom painting, in turn, suggests domesticity and a sense of well being within one's own home (in Letter B22 Van Gogh himself maintains that the painting conveys "absolute restfulness"). When Van Gogh painted the two Saint-Rémy copies he may have been ruminating on all that he had lost in Arles and what he was deprived of within the asylum walls: a home and a sense of purpose.

Note: The bedroom also appears as a very faint secondary motif in Van Gogh's drawing Interior of a Restaurant.

Paintings within the works . . . .

Van Gogh's bedroom series of works is also unusual in that it's the only time that the artist depicts other examples of his own works within a painting. Vincent's Yellow House in Arles not only served as the artist's home, but also as his studio. As a result, he hung many of his newly painted works on the walls within the Yellow House (the adjacent bedroom of Paul Gauguin, for example, displayed a number of Van Gogh's famous sunflower paintings).

The works depicted in the bedroom series present some challenges. First of all, only the three paintings (one over the bed and two side by side on the right wall) shown in each of the five versions will be considered. Ronald Pickvance speculates that the two drawings on the bottom of the right wall are likely to be Japanese prints.3 Van Gogh's fondness for Japanese art works is well known--a fondness particularly acute during his Arles period. Interestingly, the Japanese prints are missing from the Letter 554 version.

The three paintings are varied and present some interesting insights. For example, in the original work Van Gogh displays two of his favourite portraits, whereas in the later Musée d'Orsay version he includes a self-portrait that he wouldn't paint until nearly a year later. Van Gogh may have included this particular self-portrait in the d'Orsay version because he's shown to be remarkably healthy and vigorous in spite of his internment at Saint-Rémy. A subtle "message in a bottle" to reassure the original recipients of the d'Orsay version: Vincent's mother and his sister, Wil.

The table below shows each of the "paintings within the work" in detail.

Conclusion

Unquestionably Vincent's Bedroom in Arles is a work which speaks volumes about the man who created it, however the painting also stands on its own as a vital and beautifully executed masterpiece. The subject matter, a comfortable bedroom, is an archetypal motif that transcends the time and place of its origin. The work, which remains as fresh and compelling as it did more than a century ago, inspires new generations in myriad ways: from the absurd (miniature golf course recreations of the bedroom) to the sublime (complex virtual 3D constructs of the bedroom).

Vincent van Gogh himself hoped that the painting would "rest the brain, or rather the imagination." To his credit, the work does neither.