Extolling the artistic and cultural virtues of Arles feels like a perfectly good topic for a book, but it’s tough to buy this as the history of Arles through Van Gogh’s eyes, as the book asserts.

The early chapters follow Van Gogh’s letters on the topic, which is accurate to the book’s purported aim but not especially interesting. The latter part of the book is an appreciating of lesser known French medieval architecture, which was interesting but not accurate to the book’s purported topic.

As an Art Historian I struggle a lot with the general public’s fixation on Van Gogh and wish more attention was paid to other artists active during this time period, but I also know that Van Gogh is what sells, so I can’t say I blame the author for trying to center the book around him. The problem is, this only happens in those early chapters. The rest of the book, while more interesting to me, feels like it covers an entirely different subject, and at the book’s conclusion, you can feel the author laboring to tie the material back to the alleged point, which is almost never a good thing.

A beautifully written travel memoir on Arles told through the lens of one of its most famous visitors, Vincent van Gogh.

This was an interesting history of Arles, France. The author talks about the time Vincent Van Gogh spent there, a short time, but a very prolific time of painting. Also a lot about the area, Roman ruins and links to the Pilgrimage trail. I have visited Arles and traced the Van Gogh trail so this was helpful to me.

So much of this book was so delightful; so much of it was also boring. About halfway through it started feeling a lot less about Van Gogh than I was expecting. I do think, however, that it just kind of wasn’t for me. (I’m in my fast-paced era.) I learned a lot and even found it enjoyable at many times.

Vincent's Arles...
Genre: Art & Travel
University of Chicago Press
Pub. Day: 9 Mar. 2023

Linda Seidel takes readers on a journey through history, describing architecture, sights, and changes as she explores the city of Arles, France. As the title suggests, Seidel does describe the Arles of Vincent's time and how the area was in his mind versus how it was in reality. But in addition to this, Seidel also goes further back to ancient history involving the town such as mentions by the Greeks and the settling as a Roman town as they expanded ever further from the Mediterranean. Without following any concise chronological order, Seidel also describes the Arles of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
Using historical documents, literature, letters, and art Seidel expertly provides readers with an in-depth depiction of the town. In addition to the easily readable, and easily followable narration, the included images add a vast amount to the work. *I did have to look up the images for color (because Kindle doesn't do color), but this didn't distract or disrupt me since I expected to do that when requesting the arc.
Readers of history, art, and travel will enjoy this work, but should be cautious if you think you are getting something solely focused on Vicent and his works from Arles.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the dARC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

Vincent's Arles is a reflection on the Provincial town of Arles and its Roman history. I was interested to read the book as I've visited, and I was interested in Vincent's time there.

The book has some information about Vincent's time he lived in Arles before his untimely death. However, it delves much more into its historical significance through the ages. From the title I was expecting it all to be able Vincent's time in Arles, but this is a much broader exploration of the town and itself. For those with an intersest in this historically rich area, there is much to discover!

I will admit for me parts of it were a bit dry as I was more interested in the artist's life. But ultimately I found much to enjoy in the book.

To read this book, you must first understand a bit about the author and then read its description.
Don't be fooled by the title, this not all about Vincent. This is about Arles. And the author's passion for Vincent, for pilgrimages, for architecture, that all converge in Arles.

Not knowing all this, reading this book felt a bit strange. It seemed things connected only for the author and she added a lot of information just to compose a book. It is not entirely true, and it is all illuminated in the last chapter. This books seems to start from a very personal approach to Arles, it's a sort of guide to learn and appreciate Arles through the author's passions.

For me, this last chapter was the best part of the book, the most approaching and approachable. Also because what she wrote there spoke to me on a personal level. I picked this book due to my hope that I will one day visit Arles. It being on the road of a personal pilgrimage she mentions in the last chapter. For this, I am very happy I read this book.

You should read it if you want to visit Arles, even through the eyes of someone else.
If you want to see Arles, are passionate about architecture, Christian Medieval musings and pilgrimages. And if you want to see the Arles Vincent painted. But keep in mind, this is not all about him.

I received a copy of this in order to offer my personal view on it.

This book is for serious Van Gogh fans with a serious interest in learning about Van Gogh’s thoughts behind and reasoning for what and why he painted certain places. Interesting take on how Vincent viewed Arles. Deep, historical descriptions of Arles architecture again for the person with serious interest in the history of Arles. Interesting read.

Ok, so I started this book attracted by the title and Vincent Van Gogh but it is actually Arles through the ages, and the Saint Trophime church and the Alyscamps cemetery, and their place on Saint James Way. And that is certainly pretty interesting, since it you can see how the urban landscape evolve from roman times to what is Arles now, how it attracted pilgrims and why Arles was so important, many years before it was included in the Pilgrim’s Guide.

It also explains the iconography based on the city history and the stories the Church wanted to tell those pilgrims, and how different people feel Saint Trophime in different ways, not just Gauguin and Van Gogh, but also Henry James, Merimée and others.

By the way, it’s a pity the pictures are all black and white, at least the ones from Vincent. Hopefully the paper edition have them in color. That would be the fifth star.

I study art and I found this book very useful and very beautiful. the figure of van gogh is very interesting and this book traces a point in his life. The author was punctual and easy to understand. absolutely recommend!

Not an angry two stars, more like a confused two stars.

The introduction and the first chapter presented a really interesting theoretical basis for the book, about how emotion, sentimentality, and an urge to feel close to the past can shape how we view reality. This feels especially relevant to van Gogh, who has become so recognizable and mythologized, so I was excited to see where this went over the course of the book. The first third is full of direct quotes from Vincent's letters, which is a feature I really liked and was ready to see more of.

Around a third of the way through, however, the book takes a hard right turn and goes into the ancient and Romanesque architecture of Arles. What could be an interesting and well-developed argument about the significance of Arles as a medieval pilgrimage route gets lost in the pervading sense that it is definitely going to loop back around to van Gogh eventually and there will be some additional context about how this relates to his art. Instead, it only comes back to van Gogh as a framing device in the afterword (!!) and even then it is in a mostly conceptual basis. Seidel sees a correlation between her own way of viewing the past and Vincent's, and that's why she wanted to use his letters as a way to drive her own examination of the cathedral architecture in Arles.

I got to this part and immediately did a double take like ... is this book gaslighting me? Is that what the introduction was about and I missed it? The tone of the beginning and end of the book just felt so drastically different that it's like I accidentally opened a book about pilgrimage symbolism in architecture in the middle and started reading that instead. I have absolutely no qualms about the arguments Seidel is making about this topic, partly because it is evidently well-researched and is a shorter introduction to her much larger body of work. I do think she still needs to cite her sources, though, despite the part of the afterword where she says we can find them all online.

tldr; came for an examination of Arles through the lens of van Gogh's letters, stayed because it was short and I was confused about how we ended up on the topic of medieval Provencal architecture.

Linda Seidel has done a wonderful job as tour guide to Arles both now and as Vincent Van Gogh would have seen it. She puts his letters and art into context while embracing a greater history of this area. The Roman period is discussed along with tales such as one wherein Gervase of Tilbury, a lawyer living in Arles around 1200, said that coffins were floated down the Rhone with a coin on top to pay for interment in Arles’s celebrated cemetery. If the coin was missing, well, let’s just call it a burial at sea. Other interesting tidbits include the connection between Van Gogh, Edgar Allen Poe, and the renovation of Norte-Dame; and details about bombing in that area during WWII. The negative is that the book lacks color images. Some of Van Gogh’s works of Arles present striking colors, especially Cafe du Forum.

Thank you to University of Chicago Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

<i>Thank You to the University of Chicago Press and NetGalley for this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!</i>

As a fan of Vincent since I learned who he was in my youth, this book was a joy to read! I learned that Van Gogh and I appreciate some of the same artists/authors, Poe and Méryon specifically. It was fascinating that people will visit sites he went to as if traveling through time, seeing what he saw which inspired him enough to create. I feel that pictures and momentums of areas we visit make us feel closer to the people who once made the site(s) memorable, connecting us in modern times to people and places of the past. It’s bittersweet knowing that locations Vincent cherished were destroyed because of the war, though through him making them famous, they are still frequented to this day. On top of learning more about the famous painter, I enjoyed learning about the history of Arles itself, my favorite part being the debate over whether the statue with thinning hair was Julius Caesar or not.

A wonderful book about art history with beautiful pictures that I can’t wait to see in color once published.

This is a lovely book looking into Vincent's time in Arles. A short book comparing Arles as it was in Vincent's time to Arles as it is now and what inspired Vincent the most. This book is good for travel lovers, art lovers, and history buffs alike.

This is a short book, and a bit of a historical travel guide highlighting the city of Arles as seen through the eyes of painter Vincent van Gogh and how it appears today. While Arles has been an important city for the arts, van Gogh's residence there marked a period of intense creation and creativity from him that now closely links the city to the painter. The author provides a lot of insight and information in such a short book, and I enjoyed reading about the comparisons between past and future as well as the parts of the city that seemed to inspire van Gogh the most. I do wish there were more images and that they were in color, but i'm not sure if them being all black and white was due to my reading an ARC or not.

"Vincent's Arles" by Linda SIedel is a novel that explores the town of Arles, as seen through the eyes of Vincent Van Gogh. I enjoyed this book, having visited Arles years ago. It brought back memories of this beautiful place at a time when life was simpler than it is now.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Many. Many thanks to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for allowing me to get a sneak peek at this treasure of a book. A print version will be added to my shelves as well. Arles is a magical place, made more so by its association with Vincent. i live this. Thank you!