Arlésiennes (Mistral)
One of 17 canvases that Paul Gauguin completed during a brief and tumultuous visit with Vincent van Gogh in Arles, this powerful and enigmatic painting depicts the public garden directly across from Van Gogh’s house. The painting's large, flat areas of color, arbitrary handling of space, and enigmatic silhouettes exemplify the deliberateness with which Gauguin sought visual harmony and symbolism in his work.
Colors in this work
Details
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin
- Date
- 1888
- Medium
- Oil on jute canvas
- Dimensions
- 73 × 92 cm (28 3/4 × 36 3/16 in.); Framed: 97.5 × 116.6 × 8 cm (38 3/8 × 45 7/8 × 3 1/8 in.)
- Origin
- France
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Holding institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Palette
-
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- Image provider
- art-institute-chicago
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
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Human Figure Both · 99%
Four women are visibly represented, and the museum description identifies the figures as four women processing through the garden.
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Landscapes Both · 98%
The image shows figures amid trees, bushes, paths, and other garden vegetation; the museum describes the setting as a public garden and landscape.
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Leisure Metadata · 82%
Leisure is included among the museum’s subject classifications, although the figures’ specific activity is not clearly recreational in the image.
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Unsettling Both · 93%
The steeply tilted space, obstructing foreground elements, enigmatic forms, and catalog-described watchful face create an uncanny, unsettling effect.
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Implied Narrative Both · 90%
The four women appear to be moving through the garden, while the fence and bush seem to interrupt their passage, producing an unresolved sense of action.
Styles and Movements
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Post-Impressionism Metadata · 99%
The Art Institute of Chicago identifies the work’s style as Post-Impressionism.
Visual Qualities
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Flatness Both · 98%
The painting uses broad, simplified areas of relatively flat color and reduces three-dimensional forms; the museum specifically emphasizes its large flat areas of color and arbitrary handling of space.
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Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 96%
Saturated blue, green, red, orange-yellow, and pale cream passages create strong color contrasts across the composition.
Medium and Techniques
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Oil Painting Metadata · 99%
The museum records the medium as oil on jute canvas.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The museum dates the painting to 1888, placing it within nineteenth-century art.
Geographic Regions
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French Art Metadata · 98%
The catalog gives France as the place of origin and identifies Paul Gauguin as French.
Source & rights
Paul Gauguin. Arlésiennes (Mistral). The Art Institute of Chicago.
High-resolution sources
- IIIF image service ↗ 1,686 × 1,333 · Art Institute Chicago · Availability not yet probed