Here, Van Gogh has depicted his bedroom in the Yellow House, furnished with simple pine furniture and his own paintings. Over the bed hang his portraits of the poet Eugène Boch and the soldier Paul-Eugène Milliet.

Color and Perspective
The most striking aspects of this work are the bright patches of contrasting color, the thickly applied paint and the odd perspective. The rear wall appears strangely angled. This is not a mistake: this corner of the Yellow House was, in fact, slightly skewed. (See painting The Yellow House)

Elsewhere, however, the objects seem to tilt upward because the artist has not applied the laws of perspective accurately. Van Gogh worked this way on purpose. In a letter to Theo he stated that he had “flattened” the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would more closely resemble a Japanese print. (See painting The Courtesan). But the artist was interested in more than just making a Japanese image. The simple interior and bright colors were meant to convey notions of “rest” and “sleep,” both literally and figuratively.

Van3„4Gogh3„4conceived this picture p painted, as he said with “the shadows suppressed 3Ú4 in free flat washes like the Japanese prints “ –as a contrast to the Night Café. “This time it’s just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything 3Ú4 is to be suggestive here of rest or sleep in general. In a world, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination”
What strikes us besides, in contrast to the Night Café, is the friendliness of this scene, filled with square, solid objects among which Van3„4Gogh3„4was literally at home. The instability of the outside world is gone and one can imagine the worrying tension of the brows of the Portrait of the Artist relaxing in the atmosphere of this refuge.