Everything about Bedroom In Arles totally explained
Bedroom in Arles (
French:
La Chambre à butts;
Dutch:
Slaapkamer te Arles) is the title given to each of three similar paintings by
19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.
Van Gogh's own title for this composition was simply
The Bedroom (French:
La Chambre à coucher). There are three authentic versions described in his letters, easily discernible from one another by the pictures on the wall to the right.
The painting depicts Van Gogh's bedroom at 2, Place Lamartine in
Arles,
Bouches-du-Rhône,
France, known as his
Yellow House. The door to the right was opening to the upper floor and the staircase, the door to the left served the guest room he held prepared for Gauguin. The window in the front wall was looking to Place Lamartine and its public gardens.
This room wasn't rectangular, but trapezoid, with an obtuse angle in the left hand corner of the front wall and an acute angle at the right. Van Gogh evidently didn't spend much time on this problem, he simply indicated that there was a corner, somehow.
First version
Van Gogh started the first version mithe bed
1888 while staying in Arles, and explained his aims and means to his brother
Theo:
» This time it simply reproduces my bedroom; but colour must be abundant in this part, its simplification adding a rank of grandee to the style applied to the objects, getting to suggest a certain rest or dream. Well, I've thought that on watching the composition we stop thinking and imagining. I've painted the walls pale violet. The ground with checked material. The wooden bed and the chairs, yellow like fresh butter; the sheet and the pillows, lemon light green. The bedspread, scarlet coloured. The window, green. The washbasin, orangey; the tank, blue. The doors, lilac. And, that's all. There isn't anything else in this room with closed shutters. The square pieces of furniture must express unswerving rest; also the portraits on the wall, the mirror, the bottle, and some costumes. The white colour hasn't been applied to the picture, so its frame will be white, aimed to get me even with the compulsory rest recommended for me. I've depicted no type of shade or shadow; I've only applied simple plain colours, like those in crêpes.
Van Gogh included sketches of the composition in this letter as well as in a letter to Gauguin, written slightly later. This version has on the wall to the right miniatures of Van Gogh's portraits of his friends
Eugène Boch and
Paul-Eugène Milliet.
Pedigree
This
Toile de 30 never left the artist's estate and is in the possession of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, on permanent display at the
Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam.
Second version
In April 1889, Van Gogh sent the initial version to his brother regretting that it was damaged by the flood of the Rhône, while he was interned at the hospital in Arles. Theo proposed to have it relined and sent back to him in order to copy it. This "repetition" in original scale (Van Gogh's term was "répetition") was executed in September 1889. Both paintings were then sent back to Theo.
Pedigree
Since 1926 it has been in the possession of the
Art Institute in
Chicago.
Third version
When Van Gogh finally, in summer 1889, decided to do redo some of his "best" compositions in smaller size (the term he used was
réductions) for his mother and sister Wil,
The Bedroom was amongst the subjects he chose. These
réductions, finished late in September 1889, are not exact copies.
In
The Bedroom the miniature portrait to the left recalls Van Gogh's "Peasant of Zundert"-
Selfportrait. The one to the right can't be linked convincingly to any existing painting by Van Gogh.
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