{"id":207667,"date":"2025-10-18T00:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T00:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/207667\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T00:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T00:19:15","slug":"a-manure-mystery-why-did-van-gogh-depict-heaps-of-sand-in-a-painting-of-his-beloved-yellow-house-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/207667\/","title":{"rendered":"A manure mystery: why did Van Gogh depict heaps of sand in a painting of his beloved Yellow House? – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u200bAmong Van Gogh\u2019s most intriguing paintings is The Yellow House<\/a> (September 1888), depicting his cosy home in Arles, set beneath a magnificent deep-blue sky. But the messy piles that are heaped up along the road in the foreground appear distracting, and seem to make little sense.<\/p>\n

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Van Gogh\u2019s The Yellow House (September 1888)<\/p>\n

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)<\/p>\n

\u200bWhen the painting was shown in an exhibition in 2000 an explanation was suggested: the piles were said to depict works being done on a trench for the installation of gas pipes. At that time there was no gas lighting inside the Yellow House and Van Gogh had wanted to make it possible to paint in the evenings. His colleague Paul Gauguin was just about to arrive, and this spurred him on to get gas installed.<\/p>\n

\u200bOn 17 October 1888, three weeks after the painting was completed and six days before Gauguin\u2019s arrival, Van Gogh informed him that this work had been accomplished. \u201cI\u2019ve had gas put in the studio, so that we\u2019ll have good light in winter,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u200bBut the Van Gogh Museum\u2019s senior researcher, Teio Meedendorp, points out that gas lighting would not have required digging up the whole road outside the Yellow House; most of the work would have occurred inside the building with just a link to the street. In Arles, gas mains had been laid in the main roads by 1881 and there was already street lighting. Evidence of this can actually be seen in The Yellow House painting, with a prominent lamp on the far-left side.<\/p>\n

In a paper just published<\/a> on the museum\u2019s website, \u200bMeedendorp shares a better answer: the piles are actually cleansing sand, used to deal with horse manure.<\/p>\n

He points to a 1902 postcard which shows the south side of Place Lamartine (the Yellow House was on the north side). In the postcard, there is a similar pile, parallel to the edge of the road, with a man holding a shovel just visible at the far end. He is clearing up manure that has been dropped in front of one of the main rampart entrances to the city, on the route from the railway station.<\/p>\n

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Postcard of Arles, Arles – entr\u00e9e de la Ville (1902), with some manure in the road and a long pile of dark sand on the right side<\/p>\n

As Meedendorp points out, the man is \u201ccleaning up the dung\u2014mostly that of horses\u2014deposited every day in the street; the droppings are most clearly visible in the foreground.\u201d He adds: \u201cThe street behind the man\u2026 has already been cleaned and spread with a fresh layer of sand to absorb the urine and loose manure left by the passing animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bLumps of manure dotting the road can also be seen in another 1902 postcard which shows the north of Place Lamartine, including the Yellow House (with the gendarmerie, or police station, on the right). Van Gogh\u2019s former home is the small house on the left side of the street, just beyond the gas lamp (the same one as in the painting). His bedroom window was just above and to the right of the top of the lamp.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Postcard of Arles – Gendarmerie et Avenue Montmajour (1902)<\/p>\n

\u200bIn August 1888, just a month before Van Gogh\u2019s painting, the Arles municipal council outsourced the cleaning of its streets to a new company, to deal with \u201cdung and sweepings\u201d.<\/p>\n

The question that remains is why Van Gogh chose to include a long pile of sand in The Yellow House? Perhaps the problem of dealing with manure just outside his front door and studio window then simply seemed part of everyday life.<\/p>\n

\u200bIn Van Gogh\u2019s time it was not only horses that had to be catered for, but also men. On the south side of Place Lamartine, the postcard Arles – entr\u00e9e de la Ville includes a prominent cast-iron pissoir\u2014a style of public urinal\u2014then a relatively recent addition to municipal street scenes in the French provinces.<\/p>\n

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Arles – entr\u00e9e de la Ville (1902) (detail)<\/p>\n

With today\u2019s eyes, this seems a curious inclusion in a greetings postcard. But at that time such a facility was quite normal\u2014and might even have been regarded as a sign of modernity.<\/p>\n

Other Van Gogh news\"\"<\/p>\n

Van Gogh\u2019s Woman by the Wash Tub, in a Garden (September-October 1885)<\/p>\n

The Art Newspaper<\/p>\n

Christie\u2019s is privately offering (not at auction) a Van Gogh drawing from the artist\u2019s Nuenen period, when he was living with his parents and using peasants as his models. In Woman by the Wash Tub, in a Garden (September-October 1885) the main figure is scrubbing clothes, with another female figure in the background hanging them. The signed drawing was sold at a Christie\u2019s auction in 2023 for \u00a31.5m. In the 1970s the drawing was owned by the distinguished Swiss collector Robert von Hirsch. To coincide with London\u2019s Frieze fair week, it briefly went on display in their King St building.<\/p>\n

Martin Bailey is a leading Van Gogh specialist and special correspondent for The Art Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery, Compton Verney\/National Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Martin Bailey\u2019s recent Van Gogh books<\/p>\n

Martin has written a number of bestselling books on Van Gogh\u2019s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>) and Van Gogh\u2019s Finale: Auvers and the Artist\u2019s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>) and Van Gogh\u2019s Finale (2024, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>) are also now available in a more compact paperback format.<\/p>\n

His other recent books include Living with Vincent van Gogh: The Homes & Landscapes that shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>), which provides an overview of the artist\u2019s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK<\/a> and US<\/a>). My Friend Van Gogh\/Emile Bernard provides the first English translation of Bernard\u2019s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UK<\/a>and US<\/a>).<\/p>\n

To contact Martin Bailey, please email vangogh@theartnewspaper.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Please note that he does not undertake authentications.<\/p>\n

Explore all of Martin\u2019s adventures with Van Gogh here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bAmong Van Gogh\u2019s most intriguing paintings is The Yellow House (September 1888), depicting his cosy home in Arles,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[14910,44890,6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55,14911],"class_list":{"0":"post-207667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-adventures-with-van-gogh","9":"tag-arles","10":"tag-arts","11":"tag-arts-and-design","12":"tag-artsanddesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom","18":"tag-vincent-van-gogh"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}