Le Fauteuil de Gauguin

Van Gogh painted this in November 1888, a few weeks into the experiment he had longed for. He had persuaded Paul Gauguin to come and live with him in the yellow house in Arles and share the work of painting, and to mark it he made a pair of empty chairs, one for each of them. His own is a plain rush-seated chair in daylight with his pipe on it. Gauguin’s is this one, a curved armchair set at night, with a lit candle and two novels on the seat where the man himself would sit. The reds and greens are keyed to feel like lamplight. Van Gogh meant the two chairs as stand-ins for two personalities under one roof. Within weeks the pair had fallen out badly, and Gauguin left before the year was over.