View to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

In late May 1888 Van Gogh took a wagon from Arles down to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a fishing village on the Mediterranean, and stayed a few days. He had never really seen the sea, and it worked on him. He told his brother Theo the water kept changing colour like a mackerel, green then purple then blue from one second to the next. This view looks back across cultivated strips of land, perhaps vines or flax, toward the low houses and the squat church at the village centre. He paints the sunlit walls in warm, light tones and throws the shadowed sides into blue. In three days there he made this painting and a fistful of drawings, then carried it all back to Arles to work up.