Garden Behind a House

Three years after the mud-brown cottages he painted in the Netherlands, Vincent van Gogh had moved to Arles in the south of France, and in 1888 the light there transformed his whole palette. This garden is built from bright, separate strokes, red roof tiles set against a hard blue sky and plants half-dissolved into pure color. He was working at a furious pace that year, dozens of canvases in a few months. He had also rented a small yellow house nearby and was fixing it up for the arrival of Paul Gauguin, hoping the two of them would begin a working colony of painters in the south.