The Bedroom by Van Gogh: Colours, Pairs and Three Versions

In this article

A picture meant to rest the mind

In October 1888, Van Gogh was living in the Yellow House on Place Lamartine in Arles. After days of intense work he was exhausted, and he decided to paint the simplest subject he had: his own bedroom.

He explained the idea to Theo in a letter written around 16 October. Colour, he said, was to do everything. By simplifying it, he wanted the picture to suggest rest and sleep, so that looking at it would calm the mind. The subject is ordinary on purpose. A bed, two chairs, a small table and a few pictures on the wall are enough.

The painting in the Van Gogh Museum is the first of three versions. It is the one he made in the room itself, a few days before Paul Gauguin arrived to share the house.

He listed every colour, and some have changed

Orange wooden table with a blue jug and basin, bottles and brushes against the wall — The orange washstand and blue basin Van Gogh listed in his letter.

Van Gogh’s letter reads almost like a recipe. He describes pale violet walls, a red tiled floor, a fresh butter yellow bed and chairs, lemon green sheets and pillows, a scarlet blanket, a green window, an orange washstand with a blue basin, and lilac doors.

Some of that is easy to see today, especially the orange table and the blue jug and basin. The walls and doors, however, now look blue rather than violet. Research by the Van Gogh Museum showed that a red pigment in the mix has faded with light, removing the warmth that once turned the blue towards violet.

That loss alters the mood slightly. The room now feels cooler than the one Van Gogh described. When reading his letter alongside the painting, it helps to imagine the walls with a little more red in them.

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No cast shadows, like a Japanese print

Green-framed window with yellow-green panes beside a small mirror hanging on a blue wall — Flat colour and dark outlines, with no light falling into the room.

In the same letter Van Gogh said he had left out shadows and cast shadows, painting in flat, free tints like Japanese prints. The window shows the method clearly: green frames, yellow-green panes and dark outlines, with no light falling across the floor.

The perspective is unusual too. The floor rises steeply and the far wall seems to lean. Part of that is deliberate exaggeration. Part comes from the room itself: the bedroom was not a regular rectangle, and one wall stood at an angle. The painting records an awkward corner of a real house, then pushes it further for effect.

Two chairs, two pillows, two portraits

Two small framed portraits with orange frames hanging on the pale wall above the bed — Portraits identified as Eugène Boch and Paul-Eugène Milliet.

Look around the room and many things come in pairs: two chairs, two pillows, two doors, two portraits above the bed. The portraits have been identified as Van Gogh’s own paintings of the Belgian painter Eugène Boch and the Zouave officer Paul-Eugène Milliet, both friends from his time in Arles.

Two pale yellow-green pillows and a scarlet red blanket on the yellow wooden bed — Two pillows on the bed, another of the room’s pairs.

Gauguin was due to arrive within days, and Van Gogh hoped the Yellow House would become a shared studio for artists. It is natural to connect the repeated pairs with that hope for company. That reading is an interpretation, not something he wrote down, but the doubled objects are clearly there.

The bed itself fills almost half the canvas. Its long wooden end and the scarlet blanket make it the warmest and heaviest form in the room, the place the whole composition leans towards.

The chairs are built from thick paint

Yellow rush-seated chair with thick outlined legs on streaked wooden floorboards — Thick ridges of paint build the chair at the left.

The rush-seated chair at the left is one of the most physical passages in the picture. Its legs and rungs are thick ridges of yellow, outlined in dark green and blue. The woven seat is a mound of greenish paint marked with red lines.

Underneath it, the floorboards are made from long, dragged strokes with stripes of green. Up close, the painting is anything but restful. The calm comes from the simple shapes and limited colours, not from smooth handling.

Damp damaged the canvas, so he painted it again

While Van Gogh was in hospital in Arles in early 1889, the painting was damaged by damp in the house. Theo had it restored, and in September 1889, at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh made a full-size repetition, now in the Art Institute of Chicago. He then painted a smaller version for his mother and sister, now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The three versions differ in details, including the portraits on the wall and some colours. The Amsterdam canvas remains the only one painted in the room it shows.

Questions about The Bedroom

When was The Bedroom painted?

In October 1888, in the Yellow House in Arles, shortly before Gauguin’s arrival on 23 October.

Where is the original?

The first version is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation), object number s0047V1962.

How large is it?

72.4 × 91.3 centimetres, oil on canvas.

Why are the walls blue when Van Gogh said violet?

A red pigment in the paint has faded over time. Without it, the violet walls and lilac doors he described now read as blue.

How many versions are there?

Three: Amsterdam (October 1888), Chicago (September 1889) and a smaller one in the Musée d’Orsay (September 1889).

Sources and image credit

Faithful public-domain reproduction of The Bedroom (1888), via Wikimedia Commons (Google Art Project). Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.

From the same autumn in Arles comes The Red Vineyard, workers harvesting under a low red sun.