Arles, 1888

The record dates The Yellow House to 1888, the year this catalogue assigns to Arles. It is the busiest year in the whole arc: 135 painted works carry that date, more than any of the ten years, and twenty-five of them name Arles or an Arles subject in the title.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 72 x 91.5 cm and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. That is within a centimetre of the size that recurs more often than any other in this catalogue: seventeen works are recorded at exactly 73 x 92 cm and nine more at 92 x 73, the same stretcher turned upright. It is one of the plainest indications in the record that the painter was working from a standard commercial format rather than choosing dimensions picture by picture.

The colour arithmetic of 1888

The measured palette here returns yellow and blue. Across the catalogue those two are the signature of the Arles year: of the 135 works dated 1888, yellow is a dominant family in 93 and blue in 26 — the highest count for blue in any year here. Brown, which dominated seven in ten works dated 1884, dominates three of the 135. Whatever else changed in Arles, the change in colour is measurable rather than asserted, and this canvas sits at the centre of it.