Railway Carriages

Van Gogh's Railway Carriages, painted at Arles in 1888 and now at the Musée Angladon in Avignon, depicts rolling stock in the Arles railway yard near where he lived. Trains and railway infrastructure were quintessentially modern subjects that the Impressionists had embraced — from Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare series to Pissarro's many railway landscapes. Van Gogh's version is characteristic in finding in an industrial subject the same richness of color and light that he found in orchards and wheat fields. The Musée Angladon, housed in an historic Avignon mansion, holds a small but distinguished collection including this rare industrial subject.

The railway carriages are rendered with Van Gogh's characteristic directness, the industrial forms treated with the same expressive brushwork he applied to natural subjects. Warm Arles light transforms the painted metal surfaces. The composition captures the geometry of the railway environment — parallel lines, the mass of the carriages — with both accuracy and painterly freedom.