The Gleize Bridge over the Vigueirat Canal

Van Gogh got off the train at Arles on 20 February 1888 and found the town under snow, which was not what he had come south for. Within a few weeks he was out in the flat country around it painting the bridges over the drainage canals. This is the Gleize bridge on the Vigueirat, a canal cut to carry water off the stony Crau plain, and he painted it in March, in the same weeks as his first canvases of the Langlois drawbridge nearer town. He worked through several of these crossings that spring. It is a small canvas, about 46 centimetres across, done on the spot. By the end of that same March the almond was in flower and he had started painting blossom instead.