Vincent van Gogh’s Arles: visiting the pretty Provençal city that inspired his greatest masterpieces

The scenes of some of the paintings currently on show in London’s National Gallery can still be found in the southern French city

The market at Arles in France every Saturday stretches for more than 2km, the lush countryside around yielding enough produce to fill more than 400 stalls to overflowing. Alongside the plump fruit and vegetables, drifts of cheese and butter paint the whole scene a deep cream, echoing the Provençal city’s warm limestone and light yellow plaster.

Vincent van Gogh was drawn to yellow, which radiates from many of his best-known and best-loved paintings. The Yellow House was his home outside the city’s ramparts when he moved from Paris to Arles in 1888, hoping (and failing) to start an artists’ colony. It was a studio only in the summer, then furnished for living in the autumn. A new park nearby that he dubbed Poet’s Garden inspired pictures that burst with colourful and abundant growth.