The Poet's Garden

During the warm summer of 1888, Vincent van Gogh painted this quiet garden while living in Arles, in the south of France. The park stood right across from his Yellow House, the home where he hoped to build a colony of artists who would live and work together. With his friend Paul Gauguin due to arrive soon, Van Gogh set out to fill the guest room with bright garden scenes as a warm welcome, and this canvas was part of that hopeful plan.

He called the place "The Poet's Garden" because it made him think of Italian poets like Dante and Petrarch strolling through leafy groves lost in thought. The thick, lively brushstrokes give the trees and grass a gentle sense of movement, while the golden green sky softens everything into a dreamy calm. This is a quieter Van Gogh than many people picture, with none of the fierce swirls he is famous for, and it reveals how much simple pleasure he took in the nature around him during one of the more optimistic stretches of his life.