L'Arlésienne

This is one of the portraits Van Gogh made of Marie Ginoux more than a year after he had last seen her. Back in Arles, in November 1888, she had sat once for him and Gauguin together. Van Gogh painted her fast that day, and Gauguin made a charcoal drawing. By early 1890 Van Gogh was in the asylum at Saint-Remy, the two men long estranged after the ear, and he took up Gauguin's old drawing and built several new versions of the sitter from it. He works from another artist's sheet rather than from life, filling the background with a flat wash of colour and setting books on the table beside her. Marie Ginoux had been kind to him through his hardest months in Arles. He would be dead within about half a year.