The name Bedroom at Arles, sometimes also Vincent’s Bedroom, refers to three different paintings and two drawings in letters, all of them executed between 1888 and 1889 by Vincent van Gogh in the Yellow House, Arles. The paintings are now exhibited in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.


The painting shows a very simply furnished room with one bed, two chairs and a table. The overall impression might be called rustic and almost bald. There is no person in the room. The Bedroom paintings of van Gogh show how the painter lived and what friends he used to have: there are three portraits on the wall (including a self-portrait) and a mirror.

The colors are typical for van Gogh, bold and roughly applied, yet bright with thick black separation lines.

The Bedroom in Arles was meant to be a contrast to van Gogh’s “Night Café”, which features a sharp contrast between red and green. Van Gogh used in the Bedroom paintings the complementary colors yellow ocher and violet, which are much calmer than the signal colors.