阿尔勒的卧室

In October 1888 Van Gogh was living in the Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France, and expecting a guest. The painter Paul Gauguin was coming to share the studio, and Van Gogh painted his own small bedroom to hang on the wall for him. He was very deliberate about it in a letter to his brother Theo. The flat bright colors, he said, were meant to rest the eye and suggest sleep and calm, which is why the walls and the two chairs and the plump red blanket sit so plainly against one another. The room slopes a little because he painted the real corner of the house. A flood later damaged the canvas, and Van Gogh made two more versions of it, one of which he sent home to his mother and sister.