In reality, he was an army officer called Paul-Eugene Milliet, whose affairs were less ethereal than the painting suggests. He has all the Arles women he wants, wrote Van Gogh enviously.
The Poet's face, meanwhile, is anxious and gaunt, its ugliness badly hidden by a thin beard, as the night around him bursts into starshine.
Van Gogh is an artist we're still catching up with. We all know his turbulent story that less than a year after arriving in Arles, he would cut off his ear.
This is a journey not to the actual town of Arles... but the Provence in Van Gogh's mind or, I want to say, his soul.
Collection
[
|
...
]