A Lane near Arles
A path between grass banks and trees on the edge of Arles, painted in Van Gogh's first Provençal summer.
Arles
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
A Lane near Arles — at a glance
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
- Year
- 1888
- Movement
- Post-Impressionism
- Place
- The farmland on the edge of Arles, Provence, France
- Viewpoint
- A field lane outside the town — the kind of place survives; not a marked spot
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 38 × 46 cm
- Now at
- Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Overview
A Lane near Arles is one of the many small landscapes Vincent van Gogh painted in the fields around Arles in the spring and summer of 1888. It shows a rough path or track running back between grassy banks, pollarded willows or young trees on either side, a figure or two on the path, and a strip of bright sky. It is oil on canvas, about 38 by 46 cm, and it hangs in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Where was A Lane near Arles painted?
Scholarship Van Gogh walked out most days from his lodgings in Arles into the surrounding market gardens, meadows and lanes of the flat Rhône delta country, the Crau and the areas towards Montmajour. The farmland around Arles is still agricultural in places but much is now built up or under intensive cultivation; this is a picture of that kind of lane rather than a marked, identifiable spot.
What is in the painting?
A path leads the eye from the foreground back to a low horizon, hemmed by green banks and by rows of thin trees or clipped willows. Small figures walk the path; grass, weeds and a fence edge it. The sky is a clear band above. The paint is laid in vigorous directional strokes that follow the path, the grass and the trees.
Look closely
The receding path
The lane runs straight down the centre to a low horizon, pulling the eye in.
The framing trees
Rows of thin trees or clipped willows hem the path on both sides.
The figures
One or two small figures walk the path, giving its scale.
The directional strokes
Each area — path, grass, trees, sky — is worked in its own rhythm of brushmark.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A single receding path down the centre, framed by trees, driving a strong one-point perspective.
Scholarship Van Gogh centres the lane and lets the converging banks and tree rows pull the eye to the horizon, a device he used again in the Saint-Rémy and Auvers pictures. The brushwork is quick and rhythmic, each area worked in its own direction of stroke.
History & provenance
The painting was acquired by the Russian collector Ivan Morozov and, after the Revolution, entered the state museums; it is in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Sources
- Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow — collection entry for Vincent van Gogh, ‘A Lane near Arles’ (1888)
- ‘Vincent van Gogh: The Letters’ (Van Gogh Museum) — Arles, summer 1888
Related paintings
View of Arles, Flowering Orchards
1889
Van Gogh looking back at the Arles skyline from the orchards the same spring.
The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy)
1889
Van Gogh's tree-lined road at Saint-Rémy the following year.
The Avenue at Middelharnis
1689
Hobbema's dead-straight avenue of 1689 — the model for a road driven hard into depth.
More by Vincent van Gogh
Café Terrace at Night
The Church at Auvers
Starry Night Over the Rhone
Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin
Also connected to Arles
Café Terrace at Night
Landscape with Snow
View of Arles, Flowering Orchards
