Boats du Rhône is a series of two sketches (a small one in a letter,[1] the other very large and detailed with a reed pen) and three oil paintings, listed below, created by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh while living in Arles, France, during August, 1888.

[1]Painted a few hundred metres behind his Yellow House, where the railway yard abuts the Rhône river, he had written his brother Theo two weeks earlier: I saw a magnificent and very strange effect this evening.

Seen from above it was all glistening and wet from a shower; the water was a white yellow and clouded pearl-grey, the sky lilac and an orange strip in the west, the town violet.

[5]This argument has been expanded to: Since the vantage point in Quay with Sand Barges is completely different from those with a sunset, it should be considered on its own, in particular as a Symbolist or sacred realism[6] homage to Eugène Delacroix's Christ asleep during the tempest.

When we consider van Gogh has replicated not only the colour of the sea and the likeness of the boat (with a tricolor flag), but also, as evidenced in his earlier sketch, he has transformed Arles’ cityscape into a mountain, there is little doubt the Delacroix heavily inspired this composition, especially when we read this admonition to his artist friend Émile Bernard, whom he dedicated the painting to, “If the study I’m sending you in exchange doesn’t suit you, just look at it a little longer”[7] repeating this sentiment again in the next paragraph.