Arlésiennes (Mistral)

This is a painting in oil on jute, a coarse, rough fabric, measuring about 73 by 92 centimeters. It shows four women walking slowly through a public garden in Arles, a city in the south of France. The two women nearest to us wear dark shawls and hold their hands to their mouths. The mood is quiet and serious. Notice how flat and bright the colors are: a red fence, a large green bush, and blocks of orange-yellow. The ground seems to tilt up toward us, like a stage floor, rather than stretching away into the distance.

Start at the right edge, where two tall orange-yellow cones rise up. They are probably hay coverings that protect plants from frost, but they look almost like standing figures. Next, find the bright red fence in the middle of the picture. With the large green bush, it seems to block the women's path. Then look closely at the bush itself. A face appears within its leaves. The artist put it there on purpose, and it gives the scene a watchful, slightly eerie feel.

Paul Gauguin made this painting in 1888, during a troubled two months in Arles with Vincent van Gogh. Their time together was meant to be the start of an artists' colony, a place where painters would live and work side by side. Instead their relationship grew tense, and Van Gogh's mental health got worse. The garden in the painting lay directly across the street from the house the two men shared. Gauguin simplified complex, three-dimensional forms into plain, flat shapes, which is why the garden looks so much like a pattern of color.

The women's gestures are withdrawn and inward, and their way forward looks blocked. Together with the face in the bush, this gives an ordinary winter walk an uncanny air. It shows Gauguin exploring what he believed to be the mysteries that fill everyday life. Nothing dramatic happens here, yet the scene feels charged. Before you move on, look again at the green bush above the red fence. See if you can find the face, and ask yourself whether the women have noticed it too.