Interpretive Resource

Gauguin created 17 paintings during his nine-week stay in Arles. Several echo van Gogh’s artwork in terms of their subject matter, yet the artists’ styles differ dramatically. Gauguin’s The Arlésiennes (Mistral) features the same setting (the public park in Place Lamartine) as van Gogh’s The Poet’s Garden. The Arlésiennes (Mistral) is also a direct response to van Gogh’s Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersberg) and exemplifies Gauguin’s preference for painting from the imagination. Gauguin specifically created The Arlésiennes (Mistral) to instruct his companion in the Studio of the South,, who preferred to paint directly from nature.

When he first saw the local women of Arles (Arlésiennes) Gauguin remarked on how "their Grecian beauty and their shawls with pleats like you see in the early primitives remind one of Greek processional friezes." In this painting, he depicts four Arlésiennes, wrapped in traditional dark shawls, hurrying through Place Lamartine’s gardens. The two women with downcast eyes in the foreground shield their faces from the violent winds of the mistral. Not far behind, the stiff forms of two other Arlésiennes walk along the path—their figures seem to echo the stationary yellow cones of packed hay used to protect plants from cold, windy weather. These elements of the painting resulted from observations that Gauguin had made from his bedroom window but painted from memory. Instead of picturing the scene with realistic detail or accurate perspective, Gauguin simplified the winding path, green bench, "weeping" tree, fountain, pond, and yellow cones into large, geometric shapes of flat color. Combined with his arbitrary handling of space, this approach succeeds in creating an enigmatic image. While van Gogh painted directly from nature, Gauguin wanted to paint from memory to use the power of the imagination to evoke mystery. Here Gauguin chose to observe the women and setting carefully, but then depicted them not as they appeared but creatively reinterpreted.

In contrast to the open foreground of van Gogh’s The Poet’s Garden, Gauguin blocked the entrance to the garden with the large bush and bright red fence, creating a distinct barrier between the observer and the scene. The somber and elusive expressions of the women impede a narrative reading of the work. Instead we focus on the abstract elements: the simplification of figures and nature into broad shapes and colors, the minimal detail, and the flat treatment of space, all of which remove the work from a specific time and place. Caught up in the decorative and rhythmic patterns of line, shape, and color within the painting, the viewer can readily understand the differences between Gauguin’s The Arlésiennes (Mistral) and van Gogh’s The Poet’s Garden.