The Langlois Bridge At Arles With Road Alongside The Canal
Van Gogh used varying techniques when he created the painting, depending upon the subject and what he wanted to convey. The grass and the path in the foreground were painted rapidly. The bridge, though, was painted in greater detail, with clearly defined stone piers and wooden beams. The detail in the ropes used to lift the roadway show that they are attached to the wooden lifting gear. Van Gogh also plays close attention to the reflection of the bridge in the water. In the distance is another drawbridge.
Van Gogh claimed the painting as "something funny... I will not create every day." There was something about the setting for this painting that reminded him of his homeland. He asked his brother Theo to frame an earlier version of the painting in blue and gold (blue in the front, gold on the side) and offer it to an art-dealer in the Netherlands, named Tersteeg. Tersteeg knew Van Gogh and his brother Theo when they lived in The Hague. He nurtured Van Gogh's early artistic interests but their relationship suffered after Van Gogh lived with a prostitute named Sien.
The Van Gogh Museum claims that the painting is the last in a series of three, yet Silverman has identified four oil paintings and a fifth watercolor, as outlined in this article.
Read more about this topic: Langlois Bridge At Arles (Van Gogh Series), Two Other Paintings
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“My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)