The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Road Alongside the Canal

Vincent van Gogh

Contemporary-Art.org
Keywords: LangloisBridgeArlesRoadAlongsideCanal

Work Overview

The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Road Alongside the Canal
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1888; Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France *
Style: Japonism
Genre: landscape
Media: oil, canvas
Location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands


Van Gogh used varying techniques when he created the painting, depending upon the subject and what he wanted to convey. The grass and the path in the foreground were painted rapidly. The bridge, though, was painted in greater detail, with clearly defined stone piers and wooden beams. The detail in the ropes used to lift the roadway show that they are attached to the wooden lifting gear. Van Gogh also pays close attention to the reflection of the bridge in the water. In the distance is another drawbridge.

Van Gogh claimed the painting as "something funny... I will not create every day."[8][24] There was something about the setting for this painting that reminded him of his homeland.[2][25] He asked his brother Theo to frame an earlier version of the painting in blue and gold (blue in the front, gold on the side) and offer it to an art-dealer in the Netherlands,[8] named Tersteeg.[12][26] Tersteeg knew Van Gogh and his brother Theo when they lived in The Hague. He nurtured Van Gogh's early artistic interests but their relationship suffered after Van Gogh lived with a prostitute named Sien.[27]


The Van Gogh Museum claims that the painting is the last in a series of three,[8] yet Silverman has identified four oil paintings and a fifth watercolor, as outlined in this article.