The Yellow House

Last updated
The Yellow House
Dutch: Het gele huis
Vincent van Gogh - The yellow house ('The street').jpg
Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year1888
Catalogue
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions76 cm× 94 cm(28.3 in× 36 in)
Location Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Yellow House (Dutch : Het gele huis), alternatively named The Street (Dutch : De straat), [1] [2] is an 1888 oil painting by the 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.

Contents

The house was the right wing of 2 Place Lamartine, Arles, France, where, on May 1, 1888, van Gogh rented four rooms. He occupied two large ones on the ground floor to serve as an atelier (workshop) and kitchen, and on the first floor, two smaller ones facing Place Lamartine. The window on the first floor nearest the corner with both shutters open is that of van Gogh's guest room, where Paul Gauguin lived for nine weeks from late October 1888. Behind the next window, with shutters nearly closed, is van Gogh's bedroom. The two small rooms at the rear were rented by van Gogh at a later time.

Van Gogh indicated that the restaurant where he used to have his meals was in the building painted pink, close to the left edge of the painting (28 Place Lamartine). It was run by Widow Venissac, who was also van Gogh's landlady, and who owned several of the other buildings depicted. To the right of the Yellow House, the Avenue Montmajour runs down to the two railway bridges. [3] The first line (with a train just passing) served the local connection to Lunel, which is on the opposite (that is, right) bank of river Rhône. The other line was owned by the P.-L.-M. Railway Company (Paris Lyon Méditerranée). [4] In the left foreground is an indication of the corner of the pedestrian walk which surrounded one of the public gardens on Place Lamartine. The ditch running up Avenue Montmajour from the left towards the bridges served the gas pipe, which allowed van Gogh a little later to have gaslight installed in his atelier. [5]

The building was severely damaged in a bombing raid by the Allies on June 25, 1944, [6] and was later demolished.

Genesis

Vincent van Gogh - Letter VGM 491 - The Yellow House F1453 JH 1590 Vincent van Gogh - Letter VGM 491 - The Yellow House F1453 JH 1590.jpg
Vincent van Gogh – Letter VGM 491 – The Yellow House F1453 JH 1590

The painting was executed in September 1888, at which time van Gogh sent a sketch of the composition to his brother Theo: [7] [8]

Also a sketch of a 30 square canvas representing the house and its setting under a sulphur sun under a pure cobalt sky. The theme is a hard one! But that is exactly why I want to conquer it. Because it is fantastic, these yellow houses in the sun and also the incomparable freshness of the blue. All the ground is yellow too. I will soon send you a better drawing of it than this sketch out of my head.

The house on the left is yellow with green shutters. It's the one that is shaded by a tree. This is the restaurant where I go to dine every day. My friend the factor is at the end of the street on the left, between the two bridges of the railroad. The night café that I painted is not in the picture, it is on the left of the restaurant.

Milliet finds this horrible, but I don't need to tell you that when he says he doesn't understand that one can have fun doing a common grocer's shop and the stiff and proper houses without any grace, but I remember that Zola did a certain boulevard in the beginning of L'assommoir, and Flaubert a corner of the embankment of the Villette in the dog days in the beginning of Bouvard and Pécuchet which are not to be sneezed at.

Watercolour by van Gogh, executed after the painting Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House).jpg
Watercolour by van Gogh, executed after the painting

Initially, van Gogh titled the painting as The House and its environment (French: La Maison et son entourage). Later he opted for a more meaningful title and called it The Street (French: La Rue), [9] paying homage to a suite of sketches showing streets in Paris, by Jean-François Raffaëlli, and recently published in Le Figaro . [10]

Paul Signac: The House of Van Gogh, 1932. Watercolour, private collection. Paul Signac Maison de Van Gogh Arles 1933.jpg
Paul Signac: The House of Van Gogh, 1932. Watercolour, private collection.

Pedigree

This painting never left the artist's estate. Since 1962, it has been in the possession of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, established by Vincent Willem van Gogh, the artist's nephew, and on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Since the 1940s

The Yellow House itself no longer exists. It was severely damaged in bombing-raids during the Second World War, and later demolished. The place without the house looks almost the same. A placard on the scene commemorates its former existence. [11]

See also

Resources

Notes

  1. The Yellow House ('The Street'), Van Gogh Museum. Retrieved on 21 February 2015.
  2. (in Dutch) Het gele huis ('De straat'), Van Gogh Museum. Retrieved on 21 February 2015.
  3. Avenue Montmajour is now Avenue de Stalingrad.
  4. The Railway Bridge, another painting by van Gogh, supplies a view from this bridge back to place Lamartine, the square in which the house was located.
  5. Letters B22 and 556
  6. A photographic document of the damaged house survived (Van Gogh Museum, Archief M. E. Tralbaut), stamped "Photo E. Barral" and annotated by the author "La Maison de Van Gogh après le Bombardement du 25 Juin 1944"; it is reproduced in Wilkie, In Search of Van Gogh, page 92
  7. Letter 543
  8. "691 To Theo van Gogh. Arles, on or about Saturday, 29 September 1888". Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. 1v:2.
  9. Letter 543, Letter B18
  10. La Rue, par Jean-François Raffaëlli, Le Figaro, supplément litteraire, Paris, March 3, 1888
  11. The Yellow House is gone

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vincent van Gogh</span> Dutch painter (1853–1890)

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterised by bold colours and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.

<i>Café Terrace at Night</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Café Terrace at Night is an 1888 oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It is also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and, when first exhibited in 1891, was entitled Coffeehouse, in the evening.

<i>Starry Night Over the Rhône</i> 1888 painting by Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night, commonly known as Starry Night Over the Rhône, is one of Vincent van Gogh's paintings of Arles at night. It was painted on the bank of the Rhône that was only a one or two-minute walk from the Yellow House on the Place Lamartine, which van Gogh was renting at the time. The night sky and the effects of light at night provided the subject for some of van Gogh's more famous paintings, including Café Terrace at Night and the June, 1889, canvas from Saint-Remy, The Starry Night.

<i>Bedroom in Arles</i> Series of three similar paintings by Vincent van Gogh

Bedroom in Arles is the title given to three similar paintings by 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.

<i>LArlésienne</i> (painting) Six similar paintings by Vincent van Gogh

L'Arlésienne, L'Arlésienne : Madame Ginoux, or Portrait of Madame Ginoux is the title given to a group of six similar paintings by Vincent van Gogh, painted in Arles, November 1888, and in Saint-Rémy, February 1890. L'Arlésienne means literally "the woman from Arles".

Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and Van Gogh's own relationship with them.

<i>The Night Café</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

The Night Café is an oil painting created by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in September 1888 in Arles. Its title is inscribed lower right beneath the signature. The painting is owned by Yale University and is currently held at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.

<i>Flowering Orchards</i> Series of paintings by Vincent van Gogh

Flowering Orchards is a series of paintings which Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles, in southern France in the spring of 1888. Van Gogh arrived in Arles in February 1888 in a snowstorm; within two weeks the weather changed and the fruit trees were in blossom. Appreciating the symbolism of rebirth, Van Gogh worked with optimism and zeal on about fourteen paintings of flowering trees in the early spring. He also made paintings of flowering trees in Saint-Rémy the following year, in 1889.

<i>Langlois Bridge at Arles</i> Series of paintings by Vincent van Gogh

The Langlois Bridge at Arles is the subject of four oil paintings, one watercolor and four drawings by Vincent van Gogh. The works, made in 1888 when van Gogh lived in Arles, in southern France, represent a melding of formal and creative aspects. Van Gogh used a perspective frame that he built and used in The Hague to create precise lines and angles when portraying perspective.

<i>Landscape with Snow</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Landscape with Snow is a painting by Vincent van Gogh in 1888, believed to be one of the first paintings that he made in Arles. It is one of at least ten 1882 to 1889 oil and watercolor van Gogh paintings of a snowy landscape. The painting reflects the La Crau plains set against Montmajour and hills along the horizon.

Wheat Fields is a series of dozens of paintings by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh, products of his religious studies and sermons, connection to nature, appreciation of manual laborers and desire to provide a means of offering comfort to others. The wheat field works demonstrate his progression as an artist from the drab Wheat Sheaves made in 1885 in the Netherlands to the colorful and dramatic 1888–1890 paintings from Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise in rural France.

<i>Drawbridge in Nieuw-Amsterdam</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Drawbridge in Nieuw-Amsterdam is a watercolor created in November 1883 by Vincent van Gogh in Drente, The Netherlands.

<i>The Zouave</i> Subject of several paintings by Vincent van Gogh

The Zouave is the subject of several sketches and paintings made by Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France in June 1888. The pieces range from close up oil painting portraits of the Zouave to full-body drawings. Van Gogh produced this collection of pieces during the period he spent in southern France, which many scholars regard as the zenith of his artistic career.Van Gogh nonetheless expressed frustration about his work during this time.

<i>The Letters of Vincent van Gogh</i> Collection of letters written and received by Vincent van Gogh

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is a collection of 903 surviving letters written (820) or received (83) by Vincent van Gogh. More than 650 of these were from Vincent to his brother Theo. The collection also includes letters van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil and other relatives, as well as between artists such as Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard, and Émile Bernard.

<i>Sunset at Montmajour</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Sunset at Montmajour is a landscape in oils painted by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh on 4 July 1888. It was painted while the artist was at Arles, France and depicts a landscape of garrigue with the ruins of Montmajour Abbey in the background. The painting is 73.3 cm × 93.3 cm. For over 100 years, it was in a Norwegian industrialist's private collection and wrongly assumed to be fake, before being re-examined, authenticated and sold to its current private owner. The painting was temporarily on display from 24 September 2013 until 12 January 2014 as part of an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

<i>Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles)</i> Oil painting by Vincent van Gogh

Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It was executed in Arles around November 1888 and is in the collection of the Hermitage Museum. It was intended as decoration for his bedroom at the Yellow House.

<i>Boats du Rhône</i> Series of artworks by Vincent van Gogh

Boats du Rhône is a series of two sketches and three oil paintings, listed below, created by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh while living in Arles, France, during August, 1888.

<i>Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear</i> 1889 self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is an 1889 self-portrait by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The painting is in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art and on display in the Gallery at Somerset House. The painting includes inspiration from Japanese Woodblock printing.

<i>Van Goghs Chair</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh's Chair is a painting created in 1888 by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It is currently held by the National Gallery, London.

References