La Diligence de Tarascon

Van Gogh painted this old stagecoach in Arles in October 1888, in a single afternoon, during the weeks he spent readying the Yellow House for Gauguin. He had been dreaming of a studio of the south, a small community of painters working side by side, and Gauguin was finally on his way. The coach is half a private joke: he had been rereading Alphonse Daudet's comic novel about Tartarin of Tarascon, a boastful southerner, in which an ancient diligence like this one appears. The shutters on the inn behind are closed for the afternoon siesta and the shadows are short. Gauguin arrived a few days later, and by the end of December the two men had fallen out and van Gogh had cut off part of his ear.