page_title: The Yellow House
section_title: Genesis
hierarchical_section_title: The Yellow House / Genesis
context_page_description: The Yellow House, alternatively named The Street, is an 1888 oil painting by the 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.
  The house was the right wing of 2 Place Lamartine, Arles, France, where, on May 1, 1888, Van Gogh rented four rooms. He occupied two large ones on the ground floor to serve as an atelier and kitchen, and on the first floor, two smaller ones facing Place Lamartine. The window on the first floor near the corner with both shutters open is that of Van Gogh's guest room, where Paul Gauguin lived for nine weeks from late October 1888. Behind the next window, with one shutter closed, is Van Gogh's bedroom. The two small rooms at the rear were rented by Van Gogh at a later time.
  Van Gogh indicated that the restaurant where he used to have his meals was in the building painted pink close to the left edge of the painting. It was run by Widow Venissac, who was also Van Gogh's landlady, and who owned several of the other buildings depicted.
  To the right of the Yellow House, the Avenue Montmajour runs down to the two railway bridges.
context_section_description: The painting was executed in September 1888, at which time Van Gogh sent a sketch of the composition to his brother Theo:.
  'Also a sketch of a 30 square canvas representing the house and its setting under a sulphur sun under a pure cobalt sky. The theme is a hard one! But that is exactly why I want to conquer it. Because it is fantastic, these yellow houses in the sun and also the incomparable freshness of the blue. All the ground is yellow too. I will soon send you a better drawing of it than this sketch out of my head.
  The house on the left is yellow with green shutters. It's the one that is shaded by a tree. This is the restaurant where I go to dine every day. My friend the factor is at the end of the street on the left, between the two bridges of the railroad. The night café that I painted is not in the picture, it is on the left of the restaurant.
  
  Milliet finds this horrible, but I don't need to tell you that when he says he doesn't understand that one can have fun doing a common grocer's shop and the stiff and proper houses without any grace, but I remember that Zola did a certain boulevard in the beginning of L'assommoir, and Flaubert a corner of the embankment of the Villette in the dog days in the beginning of Bouvard and Pécuchet which are not to be sneezed at.'
  Initially, Van Gogh titled the painting as The House and its environment (French: La Maison et son entourage). Later he opted for a more meaningful title and called it The Street (French: La Rue), paying homage to a suite of sketches showing streets in Paris, by Jean-François Raffaëlli, and recently published in Le Figaro.
caption: Paul Signac: The House of Van Gogh, 1932. Watercolour, private collection.
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