Le Pont de Langlois à Arles

Not long after reaching Arles in the spring of 1888, Van Gogh found this little drawbridge over a canal south of the town, and it clearly pleased him: he drew and painted it again and again. Part of the appeal was homesickness. The counterweighted wooden bridge, the kind that tilts up to let boats pass, was an ordinary sight in his native Holland, and here one stood under the hard southern sun. A small cart crosses the span while, down at the waterline, women kneel to beat and rinse their laundry. He mentioned the bridge more than once in the letters he wrote to his brother Theo that spring, and sent a version of it north to be seen in Paris.