Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles

Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles is one of a series of thematically related paintings, all standard toiles de trente, that Vincent van Gogh executed in the south of France between August and October 1888, a period of intense creativity for him. He was probably referring to this painting when he wrote to his brother Theo around October 10, briefly stating that he has finished “a new size 30 canvas...another garden.” For months van Gogh had absorbed the warm Mediterranean atmosphere of Arles, and Entrance, remarkable for its strident and saturated colors, its profusion of semi-exotic foliage, and its dazzling, shadowless light, conveys the artist’s newfound delight in the region.