Fishing Boats at Sea

In June 1888, Van Gogh took a 30 mile stagecoach trip from Arles to the seaside fishing village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Van Gogh's week long trip was taken to recover from his health problems and to make some seaside paintings and drawings. At that time, Saintes-Maries was a small fishing village with under a hundred homes. In just a few days, he made two paintings of the sea, one of the village, and nine drawings. One of the paintings was Van Gogh Museum's Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, of which he described to his brother, Theo: "I made the drawing of the boats when I left very early in the morning, and I am now working on a painting based on it, a size 30 canvas with more sea and sky on the right. It was before the boats hastened out; I had watched them every morning, but as they leave very early I didn't have time to paint them." Some of the work on the painting was finished in the studio, such as capturing the light in the sand, the sea, and the sky. Yesterday was Vincent's birthday; he was born on March 30th, 1853.