A flood, and two copies

There are three versions of the Bedroom, and the reason is not artistic restlessness. It is water. In the spring of 1889, while Van Gogh was hospitalized and the canvas sat in storage, river flooding in Arles reached his stored works, and the first version suffered water damage. He discovered it in late April as he was packing pictures to send to his brother Theo, who had it relined to save it (relining means gluing a fresh canvas to the back of a weakened one to hold it together). The original survived, but only after that rescue.

Because the first canvas had been hurt, Van Gogh painted a second, full-size version in September 1889 as a faithful copy; that one is now in the Art Institute of Chicago. He also made a smaller third versionthe same autumn, for his mother and his sister Wil, and that one is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. So the famous “three Bedrooms” all trace back to a flood: one original, water-damaged and relined, plus a full-size and a small replacement made by the same hand. They are told apart by the pictures on the wall. Everything here is the first, the original, the one that got wet and was saved.