About this work
*Landscape Near Arles* is an 1888 oil on canvas depicting a rural scene in Provence. The eye settles first on the foreground: a harvest of abundance is suggested by bold brushstrokes and warm hues applied to a bulging haystack, while the unique light of the Midi is reflected off every surface, altering and enhancing colours.
The cubic structure of horizontals and verticals, the overlapping planes of walls and houses, the orange-tiled roofs, and the blue trees and distant hills give the composition its striking architectural calm. The farmhouse is a traditional *mas*, framed by cypress trees typical of the region.
The warm yellows, browns, and greens of the field, rendered with visible brushstrokes, convey the textures of recently harvested land, while a muted blue-grey sky hints at a cloudy day, casting a soft, diffused light over the scene.
This canvas was the first Gauguin painted during the two months he spent in Provence with Vincent van Gogh in 1888, just after his productive summer in Pont-Aven.
It was painted on a linen canvas van Gogh stretched for him, on a setting that was one of van Gogh's favourites — the plains of the Crau. And yet, for all that biographical intimacy, while the rural subject and acidic colours show the influence of van Gogh, the painting is more indebted to Paul Cézanne — in the careful integration of the haystack and farm buildings, Gauguin echoes Cézanne's emphasis on geometric form.
The colours and style foreshadow his later experiments in French Polynesia — tropical shades and simple outlines already evident here. The work sits at a hinge point: a painter absorbing the lessons of two giants while quietly becoming something neither of them were.
This is a painting for rooms that reward stillness — a reading room or study where natural light shifts through the day, a dining room anchored in earthy warmth. The rural scene reads as an organised whole, Gauguin bending nature to his will rather than merely recording it — which means it rewards sustained looking. It speaks to the viewer who appreciates Post-Impressionism not as decoration but as argument: about structure, colour, and what a landscape can mean beyond what the eye simply sees.
