Painting of bedroom, blue walls, green window, tan bed, red bedding.

The Bedroom

Vincent van Gogh

1889

Vincent
van
Gogh
so
highly
esteemed
his
bedroom
painting
that
he
made
three
distinct
versions:
the
first,
now
in
the
collection
of
the
Van
Gogh
Museum,
Amsterdam;
the
second,
belonging
to
the
Art
Institute
of
Chicago,
painted
a
year
later
on
the
same
scale
and
almost
identical;
and
a
third,
smaller
canvas
in
the
collection
of
the
Musée
d’Orsay,
Paris,
which
he
made
as
a
gift
for
his
mother
and
sister.
Van
Gogh
conceived
the
first
Bedroom
in
October
1888,
a
month
after
he
moved
into
his
“Yellow
House”
in
Arles,
France.
This
moment
marked
the
first
time
the
artist
had
a
home
of
his
own,
and
he
had
immediately
and
enthusiastically
set
about
decorating,
painting
a
suite
of
canvases
to
fill
the
walls.
Completely
exhausted
from
the
effort,
he
spent
two-and-a-half
days
in
bed
and
was
then
inspired
to
create
a
painting
of
his
bedroom.
As
he
wrote
to
his
brother
Theo,
“It
amused
me
enormously
doing
this
bare
interior.
With
a
simplicity
à
la
Seurat.
In
flat
tints,
but
coarsely
brushed
in
full
impasto,
the
walls
pale
lilac,
the
floor
in
a
broken
and
faded
red,
the
chairs
and
the
bed
chrome
yellow,
the
pillows
and
the
sheet
very
pale
lemon
green,
the
bedspread
blood-red,
the
dressing-table
orange,
the
washbasin
blue,
the
window
green.
I
had
wished
to
express
utter
repose
with
all
these
very
different
tones.”
Although
the
picture
symbolized
relaxation
and
peace
to
the
artist,
to
our
eyes
the
canvas
seems
to
teem
with
nervous
energy,
instability,
and
turmoil,
an
effect
heightened
by
the
sharply
receding
perspective.

Title The Bedroom
Artist Vincent van Gogh
Date 1889
Medium Oil on canvas
Style Post-Impressionism
Dimensions 73.6 × 92.3 cm (29 × 36 5/8 in.); Framed: 88.9 × 108 × 8.9 cm (35 × 42 1/2 × 3 1/2 in.)

About Vincent van Gogh

During Vincent van Gogh’s tumultuous career as a painter, he created a revolutionary style characterized by exaggerated forms, a vivid color palette, and loose, spontaneous handling of paint. Although he only actively pursued his art for five years before his death in 1890, his impact has lived on through his works.

In 1886 Van Gogh left his native Holland and settled in Paris, where his beloved brother, Theo, was a paintings dealer. In the two years he spent in Paris, Van Gogh painted no fewer than two dozen self-portraits. The Art Institute’s early, modestly sized example displays the bright palette he adopted with an overlay of small, even brushstrokes, a response to the Pointillist technique Georges Seurat used, most notably in A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884. Works such as Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières); Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples; and Cypresses show the influence of the Impressionists.

Exhausted with the Parisian city life, Van Gogh moved on to the town of Arles in 1888. It was here that he created compositions of such personal importance that he repeated them several times, such as The Bedroom and Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La berceuse), with slight variations on each repetition.

After experiencing several bouts of mental illness, at the time diagnosed as epilepsy, Van Gogh was admitted to the Asylum of Saint Paul in Saint-Rémy. There he sketched and painted the grounds of the asylum and the town around him. On days when he was unable to go out, he copied works by other artists, such as The Drinkers, after a wood engraving of the same title by Honoré Daumier. 

Van Gogh spent the last few months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town to the north of Paris. Here, he continued drawing and painting the town and those around him, capturing people, landscapes, houses, and flowers in his work until his untimely death. The Art Institute of Chicago has celebrated van Gogh’s path-breaking work in the exhibitions Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South (2001–2002) and Van Gogh’s Bedrooms (2016).