The Poet's Garden

Van Gogh conceived 'The Poet's Garden' as a series of four decorative panels for Gauguin's bedroom in the Yellow House at Arles, and this work is among the most considered of the series. He chose the public garden across from the house partly for its beauty and partly because he associated it with the medieval Provençal poets Petrarch and Boccaccio, whom he believed had walked in the region. He described the garden as 'the ancient garden of an abbot or canon' in his letters to Theo and Gauguin, and the paintings were conceived as both personal decoration and intellectual statement about the continuity of southern culture.

The blue bench and the dark cypress punctuating the background are compositional anchors in an otherwise lush and loosely handled garden. The foliage is built from swirling strokes of green and gold. The spatial organisation is deliberate and decorative, consistent with the series' intended function as room decoration.