Vincent van Gogh
We continue our special month with the Van Gogh Museum's collection—today with this classic, The Bedroom. Have a great Sunday!
While he was in Arles, Van Gogh made this painting of his bedroom in the Yellow House. He prepared the room himself with simple furniture and with his own work on the wall. The bright colors were meant to express absolute repose or sleep. Research shows that the strongly contrasting colors we see in the work today are the result of discoloration over the years. The walls and doors, for instance, were originally purple rather than blue. The apparently odd angle of the rear wall, meanwhile, is not a mistake on Van Gogh’s part; the corner really was skewed. The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately "flattened" the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print. Van Gogh was very pleased with the painting: "When I saw my canvases again after my illness, what seemed to me the best was the bedroom."
In this video you can see how The Bedroom looks hanging in the Van Gogh Museum's gallery. : )
P.S. Here you can read the story of van Gogh’s The Bedroom and its three versions, and here are other painters bedrooms, have a sneak peek!