The house was the right wing of 2 Place Lamartine, Arles, France, where, on May 1, 1888, Van Gogh rented four rooms.

The window on the first floor nearest the corner with both shutters open is that of Van Gogh's guest room, where Paul Gauguin lived for nine weeks from late October 1888.

[3] The first line (with a train just passing) served the local connection to Lunel, which is on the opposite (that is, right) bank of river Rhône.

[4] In the left foreground is an indication of the corner of the pedestrian walk which surrounded one of the public gardens on Place Lamartine.

The ditch running up Avenue Montmajour from the left towards the bridges served the gas pipe, which allowed van Gogh a little later to have gaslight installed in his atelier.

Milliet finds this horrible, but I don't need to tell you that when he says he doesn't understand that one can have fun doing a common grocer's shop and the stiff and proper houses without any grace, but I remember that Zola did a certain boulevard in the beginning of L'assommoir, and Flaubert a corner of the embankment of the Villette in the dog days in the beginning of Bouvard and Pécuchet which are not to be sneezed at.Initially, Van Gogh titled the painting as The House and its environment (French: La Maison et son entourage).