Vincent van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles, Painted in 1889

In Vincent's Room

"In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination."

Vincent van Gogh's "Bedroom at Arles," painted in 1889, was intended to be symbolic of restful peace. A glance at this painting, buzzing with energy and filled with oddities, gives the viewer just the opposite sensation.

The room, though pleasant, all but reels with movement. Whether consciously or not, van Gogh painted the perspective, walls and decorations all atilt, so that we get the impression of a ship's cabin in a stormy sea. Strangely, the two chairs both face toward the bulky wooden bed, and the furniture blocks the two lilac doors. Paintings on the wall jut into the room as if almost ready to fall off, and the walls themselves are not square. The beveled ceiling and yellow double shutters are whacked off without mercy in the cropping of the canvas, and the whole room seems crowded into one clumsy area toward the window at the back. Yet somehow, the entire effect is somehow quite pleasing.

Before he left Paris in 1888 to go live in the south of France at Arles, Vincent met most of what are now considered the famous Impressionist artists of that period. Moved and excited by their work and ideas, he developed the dream of creating an artists' commune he labeled "Studio of the South." The now famous Yellow House in Arles became the focal point for his dream. He readied the Yellow House for his guests, painting still lifes and decorating with the intensity reflected in his artwork.

The artist who became his greatest influencer, closest friend and eventually his downfall, Paul Gauguin, was the first and only member to join the "Studio of the South." His visit with van Gogh was fraught with tension and he left after just over two months. The two artists disagreed to the point of violent arguments about almost every subject, but especially about painting. During one such argument at the end of Gauguin's stay, Vincent, a mentally unstable epileptic, heard a voice in his ear saying, "Kill him." Rather than obey, he cut off most of the offending ear. It was the denouement of an incident that placed him for all time among the ranks of the greats who were unable to cope with life, but nevertheless gifted the world with masterpiece after masterpiece.

Undoubtedly, Vincent's room did not really look the way he portrayed it. Yet in a letter to his brother Theo, his description of this picture includes no acknowledgment of intentionally conveying upheaval. On the contrary, he is at pains to talk about its restful mood, a symbol of relaxation and peace. The inescapable conclusion is that it was he, Vincent, who required the peace... and he who never found it.

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Analysis of The Sunflowers - Vincent van Gogh

Vincent's Sunflowers

"The sunflower is mine in a way." -Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" are among his most famous paintings, but few people realize he did many sunflower pictures, not just the most famous "Vase with Twelve Sunflowers" and "Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers." These were canvases he made to decorate the Yellow House in Arles in anticipation of his friend Paul Gauguin's visit, and in the hope that other artists would follow and form a Utopian art community. Some of Vincent's sunflower paintings are all but indistinguishable, with only tiny differences to prove one reproduction is different from the next. During his stay in Paris, he painted cut sunflowers in different stages of being, from fresh to wilted to dry.

He appears to have brought his passion for sunflowers with him from his homeland in Holland wherever he roamed, and indeed, they make the kind of dramatic subject he loved. Around the world today, the sunflower is synonymous with Vincent's work, immediately recognizable and every bit as much his own as the water lilies belonging to Monet.

Vincent's "Sunflowers No. 2," the most famous sunflower still life, yellow on yellow, possesses the same universal appeal and impact of all his most beloved pictures. So widespread is the appeal of his sunflowers, in fact, that in 1987, a Japanese company paid a record of the equivalent of almost 40 million dollars for "Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers" at an auction. Van Gogh's many sunflower canvases are flung all over the world in testimony to his mastery, now residing in art galleries in Europe, London and Tokyo, to name a few.

During his stay in Paris, Vincent hobnobbed with some of the greatest Impressionist painters of the period. The artists all had a great effect on one another, including van Gogh, who was recognized as a formidable genius by "Les Vingt," Monet and Toulouse Lautrec, among others. One can readily discern the Paris sunflowers from the ones Vincent painted later, in the Yellow House at Arles, since they are cut flowers without vases. These cut sunflowers are depicted in various stages of wilting, but Vincent's final bright and bold color palette is evident at this point in his artistic development, permeating the pictures with life and joy.

The master's influence on western art and artists cannot be overstated. His work bridged impressionism, expressionism, cubism and more with a unique language understood by all lovers of beauty and truth. The enormous popularity of a simple vase of sunflowers attests to his power and sincerity.

Though Vincent was plagued by a serious mental imbalance and eventually took his own life, he left a body of over 2,000 canvases, painted in about a decade, as a living legacy. Whether they represent his portrayals of living fields of wheat or swirling stars, tender and thoughtful portraits of the peasants he loved or starkly vivid flowers in a simple vase, his works all bear his own stylistic imprint. Seen as a superb form of communication of the spirit, his work succeeded beyond his wildest dreams to comfort and console humanity through art. It is through his paintings, not his over-romanticized, beleaguered life, that he should be judged as the poet, prophet and master artist he was.

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