Railway Carriages

Van Gogh came south to Arles by train in February 1888, and by that August he was painting the railway itself, a row of goods wagons standing in the flat, hard light he had crossed the country to find. The trains that had carried him were remaking Provence, pulling this farming corner of France into the reach of Paris. He worked fast and thickly here, the colour laid on in the heat of his most productive year. There is a particular reason to notice this modest canvas. Of all the pictures Van Gogh made in the south, this is the only one that stayed, and it hangs today in Avignon, less than 25 miles from where he set up to paint it.