The Bedroom

Van Gogh painted The Bedroom in October 1889, at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy, where he had been a patient since May. It is the second of three versions he made of his bedroom at the Yellow House in Arles, where he had lived from September 1888 until his breakdown in December. The first version, painted in Arles in October 1888, is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The third, painted later in 1889, is in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The Art Institute's version is the one Van Gogh painted for his brother Theo, as a replacement for the first version, which had been damaged in a flood. The painting shows Van Gogh's bedroom at the Yellow House: a bed, two chairs, a table, a washstand, and a small cabinet. The bed is wooden, painted in bright yellow and orange. The walls are pale violet. The floor is red. The window at the left looks out onto a green field. The furniture is arranged in a simple, symmetrical composition, with the bed filling the right side of the room and the chairs and table on the left. The perspective is deliberately distorted: the room appears to tilt forward, as if the viewer is looking down into a box. Van Gogh described the painting in a letter to Theo, written in October 1888: 'This time it's simply my bedroom; only here color is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture should rest the mind, or rather the imagination.' He chose the colors to express 'the absolute restfulness of the room': the violet walls, the yellow bed, the red floor, the green window. The colors are not realistic. They are emotional, chosen for their effect on the viewer. Van Gogh had been at Saint-Remy since May 1889, after the ear incident in Arles in December 1888. He was allowed to paint, and he produced some of his most concentrated work that summer: Starry Night, the iris paintings, and the olive grove series. The Bedroom was painted in October, during a period of relative calm. He wrote to Theo that he was working on it 'with a brush as firm as a sword.' Oil on canvas, 73 by 92 centimeters. Van Gogh painted with thick, directional strokes, building the walls and floor in broad, flat areas of color. The brushwork is less agitated than in the Arles version, with smoother surfaces and more deliberate color choices. The paint is applied in thick ridges, especially on the bed and the chairs, where the impasto gives the furniture a physical, sculptural quality. The horizontal format and bright palette make this print work well in a bedroom, living room, or any room with white walls. The yellows, blues, and reds pair with natural wood, white walls, and simple, modern furniture. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the colors room to read. The painting has a warm, domestic quality that suits rooms where people relax. The painting entered the Art Institute of Chicago's collection in 1926, gifted by Frederic Clay Bartlett. It is one of three versions Van Gogh painted, and the only one in an American museum. This is a public domain artwork, scanned from the original at the Art Institute of Chicago. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.