The Bedroom
Sul dipinto
Vincent van Gogh so highly esteemed his bedroom painting that he made three distinct versions: the first, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; the second, belonging to the Art Institute of Chicago, painted a year later on the same scale and almost identical; and a third, smaller canvas in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, which he made as a gift for his mother and sister. Van Gogh conceived the first Bedroom in October 1888, a month after he moved into his “Yellow House” in Arles, France. This moment marked the first time the artist had a home of his own, and he had immediately and enthusiastically set about decorating, painting a suite of canvases to fill the walls. Completely exhausted from the effort, he spent two-and-a-half days in bed and was then inspired to create a painting of his bedroom.
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As he wrote to his brother Theo, “It amused me enormously doing this bare interior. With a simplicity à la Seurat. In flat tints, but coarsely brushed in full impasto, the walls pale lilac, the floor in a broken and faded red, the chairs and the bed chrome yellow, the pillows and the sheet very pale lemon green, the bedspread blood-red, the dressing-table orange, the washbasin blue, the window green. I had wished to express utter repose with all these very different tones.” Although the picture symbolized relaxation and peace to the artist, to our eyes the canvas seems to teem with nervous energy, instability, and turmoil, an effect heightened by the sharply receding perspective.
Art Institute of Chicago
Nel frattempo, nella vita di Vincent van Gogh
Tutta la vitaFebruary 1888
To Arles, dreaming of a “Studio of the South”
The public still neither accepted nor bought his paintings, and in February 1888 Van Gogh left for Arles in the south of France to found a “Studio of the South”, a brotherhood of like-minded artists in which he gave Gauguin the leading role. Theo backed the plan with money.
23 October 1888
Gauguin arrives in Arles
After much pleading Gauguin arrived in Arles, and in November the two painted together: Gauguin portrayed Van Gogh in “The Painter of Sunflowers”, and their first joint outing was to the Alyscamps. At Gauguin's suggestion Vincent painted from memory, producing “Memory of the Garden at Etten”.
23 December 1888
The severed ear
After an altercation on the evening of 23 December, Van Gogh, seemingly hearing voices, severed his left ear, wholly or in part, with a razor and delivered it, wrapped in paper, to a woman at a brothel. Next morning a policeman found him unconscious; in hospital he was diagnosed with “acute mania with generalised delirium”.
May 1889
Voluntarily into the Saint-Paul asylum
Van Gogh left Arles and voluntarily entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum, a former monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, accompanied by the Protestant clergyman Frédéric Salles. Of his two cells with barred windows one became a studio, and the clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings.
27 July 1890
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