Street in Saintes Maries - by Vincent van Gogh

While Van Gogh was living in Arles, in summer of 1888, he took a short trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a fishing village on the Mediterranean coast. Van Gogh was known to trying to capture everything around him, from peasants and postmen to landscapes and interiors. Drawing was as important as a way to record his thoughts as the letters he wrote to his family and friends.

The street of Saintes Maries is one of them. He painted the view of this street with its thatched roofs and smoking chimneys. During the short stay in the village, he made fifteen drawings in the following month and sent them to his friend, artist Emile Bernard, in Brittany, to keep Bernard up to date on the work he was doing.