Garden Behind a House

Van Gogh's Garden Behind a House, painted at Arles in 1888 and now at the Kunsthaus Zürich, captures an enclosed domestic garden space with the same careful attention he gave to the public gardens of Arles. The private garden — with its specific plantings, paths, and the house wall closing one edge of the space — offered a more intimate, sheltered world than the open fields and orchards he also painted. The Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland's largest art museum, holds several important Van Gogh works within its significant Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection.

The garden space is rendered with Van Gogh's mature Arles technique — vivid color, energetic brushwork, the garden's specific plantings distinguished through varied color and stroke. The enclosing house wall provides architectural definition at one edge. His palette captures the warm abundance of a summer garden in the south.