Living With an Artist in a Tiny Yellow House

In a tiny yellow house, in Arles of Southern France, lived a man named Vincent Van Gogh. He was an odd man, who spent most of his time painting landscapes and smoking from his pipe — a man at peace from the outside looking in.

After two years in Paris, Vincent left on the hunt for bright colors, interesting lighting, and warmer weather. Van Gogh arrived at No 2 Place Lamartine enthusiastic for what was to come. His dream: to create an artist colony for post-impressionist painters to pioneer a novel aesthetic of art.

Vincent sat down and scribbled letters to the painters he had known in Paris who he admired. A community is not complete without an opportunity to learn and build off one another. Persistently, Vincent begged the French painter Paul Gauguin to join him on his journey to change how people viewed art. In October, he attested to his work in his letters to Gauguin,

“I’d like to see you taking a large share in this belief that we’ll be successful in founding something lasting.”

Vincent wrote letter after letter asking him for guidance on how to shape light and choose colors in his work, while also encouraging him to come to Arles, “A vague instinct forewarned me of something abnormal,” Gauguin wrote in his personal journals. By mid-October of 1888, Gauguin agreed to stay with Vincent in the tiny yellow house of Southern France, “finally overborne by Vincent’s sincere, friendly enthusiasm,” Gauguin writes.

Before Gauguin traveled to Arles, he mailed a portrait of himself to Vincent. When receiving the portrait, Vincent was delighted. So delighted, that he paraded through town showing the people his beloved friend who was coming to visit. On a mid-October night, Gauguin rolled into Arles and waited for morning in a local cafe. The owner instantly recognized him and knew that this was the man Vincent had been long waiting for.

Gauguin arrived two months before Vincent slashed the left side of his head.

In the beginning, the two men lived cohesively. They spent their days wholly by drinking absinthe, smoking from their pipes, and exploring the art of painting. Intoxicated, they would paint side by side to show how two artists could view the same objects in different ways.

Painting with Paul Gauguin sparked an intense period of creativity for Vincent. While living in the tiny house he completed 200 paintings, 100 watercolors and sketches — including his well-known Sunflowers series — under the advice and guidance of Gauguin, Vincent unleashed a different sense of style. Pioneering a new form of art did not come without a cost; Vincent also unraveled his own demons. Thick layers of paint, sharp senses of color, and an instinct for light began to resemble the way he felt about himself. One of the paintings that he completed was a self-portrait with a bold green background; he considered it to be a painting of himself “gone mad.” The painting stares you down with cold eyes, furrowed brows, and a straight mouth; his facial hair scruffy, a mangled haircut, but in a spiffy leather yellow collared jacket.

The tiny yellow house grew crowded between the two men. They slept in the same room, parallel to each other in their separate twin beds, and Vincent had started to become unpredictable while they slept. Sometimes Gauguin would wake up in the late hours of the night to a disheveled Vincent standing over him staring, he also described Vincent as “excessively rough and noisy, then silent” on some nights.

After nine weeks, Gauguin was ready to leave the tiny yellow house. The two men also clashed artistically as Gauguin moved away from impressionism. He wrote to another painter, “I’m staying for now, but I’m poised to leave at any moment.” When Vincent asked Gauguin about his plans for leaving, he was devastated by the answer; and his plan for action was violent.

Later that night when Gauguin went out for an evening walk he heard short, quick footsteps behind him. He had heard Vincent, rushing him with an open razor blade in hand. Gauguin writes in his account of the incident, “my look at the moment must have had great power in it, for he stopped and, lowering his head, set off running towards home.” The men forever went their separate ways, Gauguin on his way to a hotel to stay for the night, and Vincent, back to the confines of the tiny yellow house.

The next morning Gauguin returned to an infestation of police officers in melon shaped hats. In the tiny yellow house blood-soaked rags were abandoned on the floor. Drops of blood lead a trail all the way to Vincent’s bed, where he laid unconscious in a pool of his own blood coming from his left ear. When he awoke, the first thing he asked for was his tobacco pipe, and his dear friend Gauguin.

But Gauguin had hopped on a train back to Paris. After seeing Vincent, mutilated and senseless in the sheets of his bed he hurried back home. Gauguin continued his artistic career with Vincent’s brother- Theo Van Gogh- as his representative and art dealer. The two men remained in contact for the rest of Vincent’s life via letters, but they would never paint together again.

The brief violent episode, lead to Vincent admitting himself to the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence mental institution. Alone listening to a man who “breaks everything and shouts day and night” Vincent produced some of his finest works such as Starry Night, Almond Blossom, and Irises. Once again, life was not easy for the artist during some of his most productive creative phases. At one point during his stay he swallowed his paints to poison himself and experienced four more severe manic episodes.

Smoking his pipe, alone and unstable for the rest of his days Vincent Van Gogh succeeded in pioneering a new aesthetic of art.