Les Alyscamps

Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October 1888 to live and paint alongside Van Gogh, who had been begging him to come for months. Within days the two men set up at Les Alyscamps, an avenue of ancient Roman tombs on the edge of town, and painted it on the same autumn afternoon. Gauguin took a high vantage point and left the stone sarcophagi out entirely, flattening the scene into blocks of burnt orange and red with three women of Arles walking the path. His version is calm and ordered. The partnership was not, and a few weeks later the two quarrelled bitterly, the night Van Gogh cut off part of his own ear.