La arlesiana

In January 1890 the critic Albert Aurier published the first long article written about Van Gogh, and in Brussels the painter Anna Boch bought one of his canvases out of the Les XX exhibition. He was in the asylum at Saint-Rémy when that news arrived. The following month he took up a charcoal drawing Gauguin had made in Arles 15 months earlier of Marie Ginoux, who kept the station café where Van Gogh had lodged, and painted several versions from it, one for each person he meant to have one. On 22 February he set out for Arles to deliver hers and was found days afterwards, unable to say where he had been. The illness kept him from painting for two months. This version stayed with his brother Theo, and it is the only one of the group still in private hands.