The Brothel

By November 1888 Vincent van Gogh had company in Arles. Paul Gauguin had moved into the little yellow house with him, and for a few charged weeks the two painters lived, argued and worked side by side. They went out together in the evenings, including to a brothel on the Rue du Bout d'Arles, which Van Gogh nicknamed the street of the kind girls. He painted this small, quick sketch of the place afterwards, from memory: women in loud dresses at the tables, a man with a glass of absinthe, two soldiers in red caps at the back. He meant to work it up into a bigger picture and never did. A few weeks later, two days before Christmas, his quarrel with Gauguin ended with Van Gogh cutting off part of his own ear.