Le Pont de Trinquetaille

Arles was an old Roman town, and Van Gogh spent 1888 painting its newest things: the gasworks, the railway, the iron and stone bridges thrown across the Rhone. This is the Trinquetaille bridge, the crossing to the suburb on the far bank, seen from below with a broad stone staircase climbing up to it and people out on an ordinary afternoon. He painted it in October, the month Gauguin came south to live and work beside him in the yellow house, while the idea of a painters' community there still felt like it might hold. The break that ended with his cut ear was about two months off.