Saintes-Maries, four titles in one year

The record dates Three White Cottages in Saintes-Maries to 1888. Four titles in this catalogue name Saintes-Maries, and all four are dated 1888 — a seascape, a street, a view, and this one. Like Asnières in 1887, the place-name occupies one year of the record completely and never appears again.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 33.5 by 41.5 centimetres, a small horizontal, and it is held by the Kunsthaus Zürich, one of six entries here in that collection, dated 1885, 1888 and 1890. The measured palette reads as blue and green.

Cottages, at both ends

Eighteen titles in this catalogue name a cottage. Eight of them are dated 1885, in the Nuenen period, and seven are dated 1890, at Auvers; the three in between are dated 1883, 1888 and 1889, and this is the 1888 one. A subject that fills the first period, nearly vanishes for four years and returns in the last is the sort of shape only a dated arrangement produces. The record supports the count and nothing more — no connection between the early cottages and the late ones is asserted here.