![Vincent van Gogh - The Yellow House (The Street) [1888]](http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1679/23538114494_60e6ea366d_o.jpg)
In May 1888, Van Gogh rented four rooms on the right-hand side of a house on Place Lamartine in Arles. The green shutters in this painting of part of the square show where he lived. Vincent had finally found a place where he could not only paint but also have his friends come to stay. His plan was to turn the yellow corner-building into an artists’ house, where like-minded painters could live and work together. Shortly after moving into the Yellow House, Van Gogh sent Theo a description and sketch of his painting, ‘under a sulphur sun, under a pure cobalt sky. That’s a really difficult subject! But I want to conquer it for that very reason. Because it’s tremendous, these yellow houses in the sunlight and then the incomparable freshness of the blue.’ He deftly translated these impressions in his studio into this composition, with its contrasting colours. The painting, which Van Gogh himself called The Street, records the artist’s immediate surroundings: he often ate at the restaurant on the left, while the home of his friend, the postman Joseph Roulin, lay just beyond the second railway bridge.
[Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Oil on canvas, 72 cm x 91.5 cm]