Arlésiennes (Mistral)

Paul Gauguin · 1888

Medium

Oil on jute canvas

Original size

73 × 92 cm (28 3/4 × 36 3/16 in.); Framed: 97.5 × 116.6 × 8 cm (38 3/8 × 45 7/8 × 3 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Post-Impressionism

Arlésiennes (Mistral) captures a quietly powerful scene of women from Arles sheltering in a public garden, their dark cloaks and white coiffes arranged with an almost ritualistic stillness against a flattened, decorative landscape. Gauguin painted this during his famous and turbulent stay with Van Gogh in Arles in late 1888, a period that sharpened his commitment to Synthetism — a style that favoured bold outlines, compressed space, and colour used expressively rather than descriptively. The jute canvas gives the surface a coarse, matte texture that softens the tones and lends the work an earthy, almost tapestry-like quality quite different from the polished finish of conventional academic painting. The title references the Mistral, the fierce regional wind that bears down on Provence, and Gauguin uses posture and heavy fabric to suggest its presence without showing it directly — a characteristically indirect approach. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on quality canvas with the same attention to Gauguin's flattened planes and muted palette, giving you the presence and texture of the original — a work that has hung at the Art Institute of Chicago for over a century — in a size suited to your own space.