| Quay with Sand Barges | |
| Artist: | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year: | 1888 |
| Catalogue: | F449 JH1558 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 55.0 |
| Width Metric: | 66.0 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| City: | Essen |
| Museum: | Museum Folkwang |
| Quay with Sand Barges, Sketch | |
| Artist: | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year: | 1888 |
| Catalogue: | F1462 JH1559 |
| Type: | Pen with reed pen |
| Height Metric: | 48.0 |
| Width Metric: | 62.5 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| City: | New York City |
| Museum: | The Smithsonian |
| Coal Barges | |
| Artist: | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year: | 1888 |
| Catalogue: | F437 JH1570 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 71.0 |
| Width Metric: | 95.0 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| City: | Maryland |
| Museum: | Private Collection |
| Men Unloading Coal Barges | |
| Artist: | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year: | 1888 |
| Catalogue: | F438 JH1571 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 54.0 |
| Width Metric: | 64.0 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| City: | Madrid |
| Museum: | Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum |
Boats du Rhône is a series of two sketches (a small one in a letter,[1] the other very large and detailed with a reed pen) and three oil paintings, listed below, created by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh while living in Arles, France, during August, 1888.
Van Gogh described his intention in a letter written August 13, 1888:
Painted a few hundred metres behind his Yellow House, where the railway yard abuts the Rhône river, he had written his brother Theo two weeks earlier:
A series was created, as argued by the Van Gogh Museum's curators Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker, because van Gogh "split the subject he describes here into two, perhaps because he realised that a high vantage point and a sunset are very hard to reconcile in a single composition." They conclude, "We do not know exactly when the latter two studies were made; there may be a connection with a letter 697, in which Van Gogh says he has painted a sunset."[2]
A leading 20th century van Gogh scholar, Jan Hulsker explained:
This argument has been expanded to: