Saintes-Maries (Van Gogh series)

When Van Gogh lived in Arles, he took a week-long trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the Mediterranean Sea, where he made several paintings of the seascape and town.

The painting’s high horizon places emphasis on the vast sea, with varying shades of blue and green standing out against the boats.

[3] Compared to the other dramatic seascape Van Gogh painted at Saintes-Maries, this one is calm and quaint, with nonthreatening waves rendered in blue and green.

He wrote that the "Mediterranean Sea is a mackerel color: in other words, changeable – you do not always know whether it is green or purple, you do not always know if it is blue, as the next moment the ever-changing sheen has assumed a pink or a gray tint."

To achieve this effect, Van Gogh squeezed paint directly onto the canvas and created texture using his palette knife rather than a traditional brush.

[3] Weeks after completing the painting, Van Gogh referred to boats in the ocean as a metaphor in a letter to his brother, Theo.

Van Gogh wrote that artists like himself were "sailing on the high seas in our small and wretched boats, isolated on the great waves of time.

[4] The Philadelphia Museum of Art owns a drawing that Van Gogh made titled The Road at Saintes-Maries.