Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing, The

The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing (1888) at the Kröller-Müller Museum is one of Van Gogh's most Japanese-influenced Arles compositions. He was struck immediately by the similarity of the Arles drawbridge to the wooden bridges that appeared in Hiroshige's Hundred Famous Views of Edo, and he painted the Langlois Bridge — a small wooden lifting bridge over the Arles canal — at least four times in different light and weather conditions. The women washing clothes at the canal bank add a social dimension typical of Japanese woodblock prints, where human figures engaged in ordinary activities were placed within landscape scenes to give them scale and narrative texture. Van Gogh described the bridge subject to Theo as his most explicit attempt to recreate a Japanese subject in a Provençal setting, and the Kröller-Müller version is among the finest of the series.

The composition is boldly divided horizontally between the sky, the bridge, and the water's reflection — a Japanese-influenced flatness. Strong outlines define the bridge structure while the laundry women are rendered in shorthand strokes. The palette of warm blues, yellows, and greens is characteristically luminous of the Arles period.