Encampment of Gypsies with Caravans

During his Arles period Van Gogh extended his lifelong sympathy with society's margins to the Romani communities he encountered on the city's outskirts. The encampment he depicted in this 1888 canvas was not a romanticized vision of Romani freedom but an observed scene of actual life — the painted caravans, tethered horses, and domestic arrangements of families living outside settled European society. Van Gogh's interest in marginal communities had begun in earnest during his time in the Borinage coal-mining district of Belgium, where he had tried to share the conditions of the miners he drew, and continued through his portraits of Nuenen peasants and The Hague's working poor. In Arles he was also responding to the quality of southern light that transformed such subjects: the Provençal noon light bleaching colour and flattening shadow was unlike anything he had painted in the grey Netherlands. Gauguin, who arrived in Arles two months after this painting was made, expressed contempt for such subjects — the tension between their approaches was already latent. Now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Short, energetic strokes in yellow, green, and blue capture the bright southern light. The caravans are rendered with simplified forms and strong colour contrasts that flatten depth in a manner influenced by Japanese prints. The foreground ground is built up in thick impasto, while the sky is painted more thinly, directing attention to the encampment.