Portrait of the Artist's Mother

In September 1888 Van Gogh was in Arles, in the south of France, when his sister sent him a black-and-white photograph of their mother, Anna, back in the Netherlands. He told his brother Theo the grey photograph annoyed him, that he could not stand seeing her without colour. So he set out to paint her from it, and from memory. He gave her skin greens and pinks, set her against a deep green ground, and touched her lips with the red that answers her dress. He was working alone that autumn, waiting for Gauguin to arrive and share the house. This small portrait was one thing he made for himself rather than to sell, a mother he had not seen in years, put back into colour.