Couple in the Park at Arles - The garden of the poet III

Van Gogh's Couple in the Park at Arles: The Garden of the Poet III, painted in 1888, is the third version of his poet's garden series showing two figures walking through the Arles public garden. Van Gogh described the poet's garden as a space connected to Petrarch and other Italian literary figures he associated with the south, making it a culturally charged location for the human encounter depicted. The two figures — a couple or simply two people sharing the garden space — give the landscape series its human dimension. The work is currently in a private collection.

The two figures move through the garden setting, rendered as relatively small elements within the larger landscape composition. Van Gogh's vivid Arles palette fills the garden with color — the warm greens and yellows of summer foliage surrounding the path where the couple walks. His brushwork on the surrounding vegetation is characteristically energetic while the figures are handled with simpler, more economical strokes.