Vincent van Gogh

  • A Pork Butcher’s Shop

  • A Pork Butcher’s Shop Seen from a Window,
    Arles, February 1888

  • (1888), oil on canvas on cardboard
  • 15.6 x 12.8 in. (39.5 x 32.5 cm.)
  • Rijksmuseum, Amersterdam
  • 579 x 700 (99 KB)

Editor’s Note:

A pork butcher in French is ‘charcutier’ and this term can be seen on the sign above the shop door.

Van Gogh was thirty’four years old in 1888 when he painted this. He wrote briefly about the town of Arles, France and this painting in a letter to his brother Theo, dated 25 February 1888. Here is an exerpt from http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/:

“My dear Theo,

Thanks for your nice letter, also the 50’franc note.

So far I haven’t found life here as cheap as I’d hoped, but still I have three studies done, which probably I would not have been able to do in Paris these days. …

The studies I’ve done are – an old Arlèsienne woman, a landscape with snow, a view of a bit of a pavement with a charcuterie [pork’butcher’s shop]. The women are quite beautiful here, that is no lie – but on the other hand the museum in Arles is atrocious and a joke, and ought to be in Tarascon. There is also a museum of genuine antiques here.”