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Vincent Van Gogh's Entrance to the Public Gardens

Vincent Van Gogh's Entrance to the Public Gardens at Arles was painted in September, 1888. The painting, which is owned by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D. C., measures 28 1/2" x 35 5/8". The work is oil paint on canvas.

The painter has represented a portion of a street passing in front of a walkway that leads into a public garden. At the entrance to the garden a man dressed in bright blue-green and wearing a yellow (straw?) hat stands, with his legs spread, reading a newspaper. Along the walk four people sit on benches, two on either side of the path. They, and a man at the end of the path are painted principally in black, with blue highlights. A rather rotund woman strolls away from the viewer, about two-thirds of the way down the walk. She is painted in blue and gray. None of the figures has distinguishable features and the face of the man with the paper, who is nearest to the foreground, is merely filled in with a daub of gray, much the same way his shoes are painted.

The fenced-in garden is shown on either side of the path, which is painted in yellowish whites and blue-gray shadows. The fence on the street side consists of thin, staggered supports with a connecting rail near the top and bottom. As the fence turns into the park, following the path, it becomes a yellow-orange solid fence, which appears to be made of painted boards. The fences serve to define the sides of a triangle made up, for the most part, of the white path. This is further emphasized by the fact that the whole composition is relatively flat, in terms of implied depth, and turned up toward the viewer. The trees and masses of shrubbery that fill the garden on either side of the walkway fill most of the upper half of the canvas. Though the walk appears to fork at the end, the space beyond it is filled by plants and trees. It is the sense of depth created by the juxtaposition of the narrowing walls of plants and the open space of the...

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Vincent Van Gogh's Entrance to the Public Gardens. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:56, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708150.html