''L'Arlésienne'', ''L'Arlésienne : Madame Ginoux'', or ''Portrait of Madame Ginoux'' is the title given to a group of six similar

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

s by

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...

, painted in

Arles Arles ( , , ; ; Classical ) is a coastal city and Communes of France, commune in the South of France, a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône Departments of France, department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Reg ...

, 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

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''), but

Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influ ...

'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 ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...

, Paris, is painted on burlap. 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, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, New York For the second version, now in the

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, 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, one for himself and one for Madame Ginoux. The provenance of the version in the Kröller-Müller Museum is not known in detail, but the painting is known to have been previously owned by Albert Aurier, 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, 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." In 1899,

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...

wanted to buy the version with a pink background, which was on sale for 150 francs, and wrote to his brother Auguste asking for money. However, Auguste was unable to provide the money as he recently bought an Acatène bicycle. Matisse raised the money over the course of six weeks and came to buy the painting, but by then the price was raised to 450 francs. File:L'Arlésienne (portret van Madame Ginoux).jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'', Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo File:Vincent van Gogh - L'Arlesienne (Madame Ginoux).jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'', Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome Image:Van Gogh - A Arlesiana.jpg, ''L'Arlésienne'',

São Paulo Museum of Art The São Paulo Museum of Art (, or ') is an art museum in São Paulo, Brazil. It is well known for the architectural significance of its headquarters, a 1968 concrete and glass structure designed by Lina Bo Bardi. It is considered a landmark of ...

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, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

, 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. Vincent Willem van Gogh 028

''The Arena''

'' Les Arènes'', also painted during Gauguin's stay in Arles, is said to depict various real life subjects whom Van Gogh had encountered, 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 1955 book ''

Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession ...

'', by

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

, the narrator calls ''L'Arlésienne'' "that banal darling of the arty middle class".

References

Works cited

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, L' Paintings of Arles by Vincent van Gogh 1888 paintings 1890 paintings Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) Paintings in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna Portraits of women Books in art Oil on canvas paintings