Artworks

The Bedroom

Artwork · Vincent van Gogh · October 1888–September 1889 · versions

Van Gogh painted his bedroom in the Yellow House in Arles three times. The first version, now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, he made in October 1888, a month after moving into the house; it was damaged by water while he was in hospital in Arles. Almost a year later, in September 1889 at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, he painted two repetitions of it: one the same size, now in the Art Institute of Chicago, and a smaller one for his mother and sister in Holland, now in the Musée d’Orsay. He described the colours to his brother Theo — pale lilac walls, a faded red floor, chrome-yellow bed and chairs, a blood-red blanket — and wrote that he wanted them to express “absolute repose”. The flat colours without shadows and the simple furniture recall the Japanese prints he admired.