Description
Les Alyscamps – the ironic second title the painter gave it
The upright canvas is divided by a diagonal. On the right a massive dark green tree rises, and beside it the poplars burn orange and yellow all the way to the top edge. On the left a blue sky opens with a pale vertical trail, and below it, among the trees, stands a building with a dome. Water runs through the lower half between green and ochre banks. On the path at the centre of the canvas stand three figures in dark clothes and white headdresses. At the lower right a red bush blazes. The work is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris under inventory number RF 1938 47; it was made in 1888 at Arles.
The Three Graces at the Temple of Venus
The French national record gives two titles at once for this picture: Les Alyscamps, and then Les trois Grâces au temple de Vénus, that is, The Three Graces at the Temple of Venus, with the explicit note that this is an ironic title given to the work by the artist himself. The joke is plain as soon as you look at the painting: the three figures on the path are not ancient goddesses but three townswomen in dark clothes, and the temple is a Christian chapel with a round dome. The same record names the building Saint-Honorat and the water the Craponne canal.
What the painter saw at Arles
The Alyscamps is an ancient burial ground on the edge of Arles, along which another painter also walked in the autumn of 1888. The museum record notes beside our work that a second version by Gauguin exists in landscape format, and that the same subject was painted four times by Vincent van Gogh. Our reproduction follows the upright Orsay version – the one, that is, that the painter himself supplied with a mocking title.
The signature in the lower left corner
The museum record states that this work is signed and dated, and gives the inscription as P. GAUGUIN 88 in the lower left corner. On the painting it is indeed visible: a thin dark stroke across the pale path, with the year immediately after the name. In the hand-painted copy we paint it as we paint everything else, with the brush, not printed.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the relation between the burning poplar and the dark tree beside it is decisive: if the orange goes too quiet, the whole right half of the canvas falls apart. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: an autumn avenue beside water, with a chapel dome and three figures on the path.
- Technique: oil on canvas, orange and yellow foliage against a blue sky.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 40 x 50 cm to 160 x 200 cm; 87 x 110 cm and 110 x 140 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: the second title is the painter’s own joke, recorded in the state register.
If the same period interests you, see also Landscape near Arles, La belle Angèle and The Green Christ. The museum record gives the measurement as height by width: 91.5 x 72.5 cm.
