L'Arlésienne (painting)
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''L'Arlésienne'', ''L'Arlésienne : Madame Ginoux'', or ''Portrait of Madame Ginoux'' is the title given to a group of six similar
painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
s by
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, painted in
Arles Arles (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Arle ; Classical la, Arelate) is a coastal city and commune in the South of France, a subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in the former province of ...
, November 1888 (or later), and in Saint-Rémy, February 1890. L'Arlésienne () means literally "the woman from Arles". The subject, ''Marie Jullian'' (or ''Julien''), was born in
Arles Arles (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Arle ; Classical la, Arelate) is a coastal city and commune in the South of France, a subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in the former province of ...
June 8, 1848 and died there August 2, 1911. She married ''Joseph-Michel Ginoux'' in 1866 and together they ran the ''Café de la Gare'', 30 Place Lamartine, where van Gogh lodged from May to mid-September 1888. He had the Yellow House in Arles furnished to settle there. Evidently until this time, van Gogh's relations to M. and Mme. Ginoux had remained more or less commercial (the café is the subject of ''
The Night Café ''The Night Café'' (french: Le Café de nuit) is an oil painting created by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in September 1888 in Arles. Its title is inscribed lower right beneath the signature. The painting is owned by Yale University and is curr ...
''), but
Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetism, Synthetist style that were d ...
's arrival in Arles altered the situation. His courtship charmed the lady, then about 40 years of age, and in the first few days of November 1888 Madame Ginoux agreed to have a portrait session for Gauguin, and his friend van Gogh. Within an hour, Gauguin produced a charcoal drawing while Vincent produced a full-scale painting, "knocked off in ''one'' hour".


November 1888 version and its ''repetition''

Van Gogh's first version, now in the
Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
, Paris, is painted on
burlap Hessian (, ), burlap in the United States and Canada, or crocus in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, is a woven fabric usually made from skin of the jute plant or sisal fibres, which may be combined with other vegetable fibres to make rope, nets, ...
. A complete ''piece'' of this fabric was acquired by Gauguin just after his arrival in Arles, and used by both artists in November and December 1888. Image:LArlesienneWithGlovesAndUmbrella.jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'': Madame Ginoux with gloves and umbrella. Oil on canvas (burlap), 92.5 x 73.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris Image:LArlesienneWithBooks.jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'': Madame Ginoux with books. Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 73.7 cm,
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York
For the second version, now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, van Gogh again painted on the commercially pre-primed canvas he had previously used, and he replaced the gloves and umbrella with three books.


February 1890 versions

While in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, van Gogh painted another five portraits of Madame Ginoux, based on Gauguin's charcoal drawing of November 1888. Of these, one was intended for Gauguin, one for his brother
Theo Theo is a given name and a hypocorism. Greek origin Many names beginning with the root "Theo-" derive from the Ancient Greek word ''theos'' (''θεός''), which means god, for example: *Feminine names: Thea, Theodora, Theodosia, Theophania, ...
, one for himself and one for Madame Ginoux. The provenance of the version in the
Kröller-Müller Museum The Kröller-Müller Museum () is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller within the extensive grounds of her ...
is not known in detail, but the painting is known to have been previously owned by
Albert Aurier Gabriel-Albert Aurier (5 May 1865 – 5 October 1892) was a French poet, art critic and painter, associated with the Symbolist movement. Career The son of a notary born in Châteauroux, Indre, Aurier went to Paris in 1883 to study law, but hi ...
, an early champion of Vincent's paintings. The version intended for Madame Ginoux was lost and has not been recovered. This is the version Vincent was delivering to Madame Ginoux in Arles when he suffered his relapse on February 22, 1890. In an unfinished letter to Gauguin that was never sent, Vincent remarked that working on her portrait cost him another month of illness. Gauguin's version was the one with a pink background, currently in the São Paulo Museum of Art. Gauguin was enthusiastic about the portrait, writing:
I've seen the canvas of Madame Ginoux. Very fine and very curious, I like it better than my drawing. Despite your ailing state you have never worked with so much ''balance'' while conserving the sensation and the interior warmth needed for a ''work of art'', precisely in an era when art is a business regulated in advance by cold calculations.
In a letter to his sister
Wil Wil () is the capital of the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of Wil in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Wil is the third largest city in the Canton of St. Gallen, after the city of St. Gallen and Rapperswil-Jona, a twin city that merged in ...
, dated 5 June 1890, Vincent set out his philosophy for doing portraits: "I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in a hundred years' time. In other words I am not trying to achieve this by photographic likeness but by rendering our impassioned expressions, by using our modern knowledge and appreciation of colour as a means of rendering and exalting character ... The portrait of the Arlésienne has a colourless and matt flesh tone, the eyes are calm and very simple, the clothing is black, the background pink, and she is leaning on a green table with green books. But in the copy that Theo has, the clothing is pink, the background yellowy-white, and the front of the open bodice is muslin in a white that merges into green. Among all these light colours, only the hair, the eyelashes and the eyes form black patches." File:L'Arlésienne (portret van Madame Ginoux).jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'',
Kröller-Müller Museum The Kröller-Müller Museum () is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller within the extensive grounds of her ...
, Otterlo File:Vincent van Gogh - L'Arlesienne (Madame Ginoux).jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'',
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna The ("national gallery of modern and contemporary art"), also known as La Galleria Nazionale, is an art gallery in Rome, Italy. It was founded in 1883 on the initiative of the then Minister Guido Baccelli and is dedicated to modern and contempora ...
, Rome Image:Van Gogh - A Arlesiana.jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'',
São Paulo Museum of Art The São Paulo Museum of Art ( pt, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, or ') is an art museum located on Paulista Avenue in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. It is well known for its headquarters, a 1968 concrete and glass structure designed by Lina Bo B ...
Image:LArlesienne Madame Ginoux4.jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'', private collection
On 2 May 2006, the painting with the floral background sold at auction at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
, New York, for more than $40million (USD). This was the version that Vincent gave to Theo.


Gauguin's versions

Gauguin produced a charcoal sketch at the original sitting of Madame Ginoux in November 1888, and later produced a canvas, ''Café de Nuit, Arles'', which features Mme. Ginoux in her and her husband's café. File:Gauguin Ginoux Sketch.jpg, ''L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux'', Paul Gauguin, 1888. File:Paul Gauguin 072.jpg, ''Café de Nuit, Arles'', Paul Gauguin, 1888.


''The Arena''

''
Les Arènes ''Les Arènes'' is a painting by Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles, in November or December 1888, during the period of time when Paul Gauguin was living with him in The Yellow House. The bullfight season in Arles that year started on Easter Sun ...
'', also painted during Gauguin's stay in Arles, is said to depict various real life subjects of Van Gogh's, including members of the Roulin Family and Madame Ginoux, whose profile can be seen in the woman in Arlésienne costume. Gayford, Martin. ''The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles'', Fig Tree, Penguin, 2006, . p. 152.


References in culture

In the book ''
Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humber ...
'', by
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
, the narrator calls ''L'Arlésienne'' "that banal darling of the arty middle class".


Resources


Pedigrees


Footnotes


External links


BBC news story of May 2006 auction''Van Gogh, paintings and drawings: a special loan exhibition''
a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on this painting (see index) {{DEFAULTSORT:Arlesienne Paintings of Arles by Vincent van Gogh 1888 paintings 1890 paintings Paintings in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) Paintings in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna Portraits of women Books in art