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 emp

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ch-sitters--the single largest area of black in the picture. The area in front of this woman is an undulating wave of light that moves from the curb across the picture to the empty spot in front of the bench. The path just beyond this seated woman also produces bars that keep the viewer's eye from wandering too far from this spot. First, a beautiful gray-blue shadow lies across the road and then a strangely rectangular patch of white, lighted path appears just beyond it. If the eye wanders too far up this path it is further held up by the round woman who inconveniently--both figuratively and actually--blocks the path. This woman and the black figures on the benches fill the room a person would need to pass through the almost tunnel-like path beyond this point. (In fact, most of the bench-sitters have a foot extended into the path, as if anyone who passed through might trip on them.) At the end of the tunnel, of course, another man blocks the way to the right, and the way to the left is very indistinctly painted. At the very end, the wall of yellow plant-life closes off the passage. The painting, which was done in September, hints at leaves slowly turning to gold--though this may merely be meant as a reflection of light.

Category: Arts - V