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Vincent van Gogh's 'Bedroom in Arles"

One of Vincent van Gogh's most striking features as an Artist is undeniably his use of color.
If one reads his letters, on can easily notice, besides his deep interest in color theory, the passionate way in which he described color:
'dramatic violet', 'blood-red', 'tender green', 'fresh butter yellow', 'bright lemon green', 'deeper blue than primary blue', 'blue whiteness of milky ways', 'forget-me-not blue glow' and the list goes on.
Vincent van Gogh found in color a way of conveying his deepest emotions to the viewer. Color was his language. The use of color in his Paintings was his main contribution to Modern Art.

Vincent van Gogh made three, almost identical paintings on the same subject: his bedroom. The first version is at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam [F482] and it's the only one among the three which had been painted in Arles, right before Gauguin went to live with him at the end of October 1888. This Painting - as you must have seen in the video by the Van Gogh Museum - was damaged during a flood that occurred while the Artist was in hospital in Arles. 
Almost a year later, and this time in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, while he was at the asylum, Vincent made two copies of it: one, the same size, which is now in the Art Institute in Chicago, US [F 484] and the other, at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris [F 483]. The latter is smaller and was painted for his mother and sister, Willemien.

"Bedroom in Arles" (Arles. October, 1888) [first version] [F482]
By Vincent van Gogh, from Zundert, the Netherlands (1853 - 1890)
- oil on canvas; 72 x 90 cm -
[Japonism]
Place of creation: Arles, France
© Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/
https://www.facebook.com/VanGoghMuseum

This is an excerpt of a letter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo from Arles, in October 1888, describing the Painting posted above:

Letter from Vincent to Theo, Arles, Tuesday, 16 October 1888
"My dear Theo 
At last I’m sending you a little croquis to give you at least an idea of the direction the work is taking. Because today I’ve gone back to it.
My eyes are still tired, but anyway I had a new idea in mind, and here’s the croquis of it. No. 30 canvas once again.
This time it’s simply my bedroom, but the colour has to do the job here, and through its being simplified by giving a grander style to things, to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In short, looking at the painting should rest the mind, or rather, the imagination.1
The walls are of a pale violet. The floor — is of red tiles.
The bedstead and the chairs are fresh butter yellow.
The sheet and the pillows very bright lemon green.
The bedspread scarlet red.
The window green.
The dressing table orange, the basin blue.
The doors lilac.
And that’s all — nothing in this bedroom, with its shutters closed.
The solidity of the furniture should also now express unshakeable repose.
Portraits on the wall, and a mirror and a hand-towel and some clothes.
The frame — as there’s no white in the painting — will be white.
This to take my revenge for the enforced rest that I was obliged to take.
I’ll work on it again all day tomorrow, but you can see how simple the idea is. The shadows and cast shadows are removed; it’s coloured in flat, plain tints like Japanese prints."
http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let705/letter.html

There are two Portraits hanging on the wall, The one to the left is the Portrait of Eugene Boch (The Poet) by Vincent van Gogh 
[Eugene's Sister, Anna Boch, an Artist herself and an Art Collector, was the one who bought the only Painting Vincent had sold "The Red Vineyard"]
"Here, Van Gogh has depicted his bedroom in the Yellow House, furnished with simple pine furniture and his own paintings. Over the bed hang his portraits of the poet Eugène Boch and the soldier Paul-Eugène Milliet.

Color and Perspective
The most striking aspects of this work are the bright patches of contrasting color, the thickly applied paint and the odd perspective. The rear wall appears strangely angled. This is not a mistake: this corner of the Yellow House was, in fact, slightly skewed. 
Elsewhere, however, the objects seem to tilt upward because the artist has not applied the laws of perspective accurately. Van Gogh worked this way on purpose. In a letter to Theo he stated that he had “flattened” the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would more closely resemble a Japanese print. But the artist was interested in more than just making a Japanese image. The simple interior and bright colors were meant to convey notions of “rest” and “sleep,” both literally and figuratively."
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/ 


As I've already mentioned, this Painting was badly damaged due to the flood that occurred while Vincent had been hospitalized in Arles. The painting was treated by J.C. Traas in 1932. In his report of the restoration, he observed that at some point the canvas had been very badly lined, ‘and a terrible mess had been made of the paint layer’. He attributed the widespread loss of paint (still evident) to that treatment.

"One of Vincent van Gogh's most famous works is 'The Bedroom', which he painted in 1888. In order to preserve it for the future, it is thoroughly examined. The Van Gogh Museum has been conducting exhaustive technical research into the paintings and drawings by Vincent van Gogh in its collection for many years now. In this video you'll get a behind the scenes look of the research."  © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/

"Vincent's Bedroom in Arles" (Saint-Rémy-de Provence. Early September, 1889) [F 484]
By Vincent van Gogh, from Zundert, Netherlands (1853 - 1890) 
- oil on canvas; 73.6 x 92.3 cm; 29 x 36 5/8 in -
Place of creation: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France 
© The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, US
Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926
http://www.artic.edu/
https://www.facebook.com/artic

Letter from Vincent to Theo. Saint-Rèmy-de-Provence. September 5, 1889

"Thus I’ve redone the canvas of the Bedroom.  That study is certainly one of the best – sooner or later it will definitely have to be lined.  It was painted so quickly and dried in such a way that, as the thinner evaporated immediately, the painting doesn’t adhere at all firmly to the canvas. This will also be the case with other studies of mine that were painted very quickly and with a thick impasto. Besides, this thin canvas perishes after a while and can’t take a lot of impasto."

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let800/letter.html

"Vincent's bedroom in Arles" (Saint-Rémy. September 1889) [F483]
By Vincent van Gogh, from Zundert, the Netherlands (1853 - 1890)
- oil on canvas; 57.5 x 74 cm -
[Post-Impressionism]
Place of creation: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France
© Musée d'Orsay, Paris
1959, cédé aux Musées nationaux en application du traité de paix avec le Japon . 1986, affecté au musée d'Orsay, Paris
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/
https://www.facebook.com/museedorsay 

Letter from Vincent to Anna van Gogh-Carbentus. Saint-Rèmy-de-Provence. September 19, 1889.

"I’m planning to send you a painting before long, and Wiltoo, I’m working on them, and certainly finished by the end of the month. Although it may take another fortnight before they’re dry enough to send. These last few weeks I’ve been perfectly well as far as my health goes, and I work almost without stopping from morning till night, day after day, and I lock myself up in the studio to have no distractions. So it continues to be a great comfort to me that the work is progressing rather than going backwards, and I do it with perfect calm, and my thoughts in this respect are entirely clear and self-assured. And so compared with others here, who can’t do anything, I certainly have no reason to complain."

http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let803/letter.html