The Langlois Bridge at Arles is the subject of four oil paintings, one watercolor and four drawings by Vincent van Gogh. The works, made in when van Gogh lived in Arles , in southern France , represent a melding of formal and creative aspects. Van Gogh used a perspective frame that he built and used in The Hague to create precise lines and angles when portraying perspective.
Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese woodcut prints , as evidenced by his simplified use of color to create a harmonious and unified image. Contrasting colors, such as blue and yellow, were used to bring a vibrancy to the works. He painted with an impasto , or thickly applied paint, using color to depict the reflection of light.
The subject matter, a drawbridge on a canal, reminded him of his homeland in the Netherlands. He asked his brother Theo to frame and send one of the paintings to an art dealer in the Netherlands. Van Gogh was 35 when he made the Langlois Bridge paintings and drawings. The canals , drawbridges , windmills , thatched cottages and expansive fields of the Arles countryside reminded van Gogh of his life in the Netherlands.
Arles brought him the solace and bright sun that he sought for himself and conditions to explore painting with more vivid colors, intense color contrasts and varied brushstrokes. He also returned to the roots of his artistic training from the Netherlands , most notably with the use of a reed pen for his drawings. The Langlois Bridge was one of the crossings over the Arles to Bouc canal. Locks and bridges were built, too, to manage water and road traffic.
The Fos Bridge was dismantled in with a view to relocating it on the site of the Langlois Bridge but as a result of structural difficulties, it was finally reassembled at Montcalde Lock several kilometers away from the original site. According to letters to his brother Theo , van Gogh began a study of women washing clothes near the Langlois Bridge about mid-March [ 11 ] and was working on another painting of the bridge about 2 April.
