Sunny Lawn in a Public Park

This patch of grass belonged to the public garden in Arles, a square of trees and lawn directly across from the small yellow house Vincent van Gogh had just rented. That summer of 1888 the house was his great project. He was painting it up and furnishing it as a Studio of the South, a place where painters could live and work together, and above all he was waiting for Paul Gauguin to come and join him. He painted this garden many times over as decoration for its walls, and in his letters he took to calling it the poet's garden, imagining Petrarch and Boccaccio walking under trees like these centuries before. This view keeps it plain, a sunlit lawn with a few figures small among the greenery, the grass laid down in thick separate strokes of green and yellow that catch the hard July light.