Of all Monet's fellow artists, it was Vincent van Gogh

who'd reach most feverishly

towards an even more radiant redemption in paint.

Earlier in his life, Vincent had failed in his calling

as a preacher to the downtrodden and the destitute,

sometimes in the darkness of the coalmines.

But his discovery of Japanese prints,

and paint, raw and straight from the tube,

gave him back his spiritual vocation.

And so, in 1888, Vincent travelled south

to what he called Japanese light,

to forge his own vision of art.

Marrying Japanese pantheistic vision of nature

with brushstrokes of pure colour,

this art would open the eyes of everyone,

especially the poor, to the miraculous force of life.

And it would be as accessible as stained glass

had been for medieval pilgrims

and as popular as a Hokusai print.

With this epiphany in mind,

Vincent gathered all the intensity of his spiritual longing

into one all-consuming obsession -

how to bring heaven to earth and turn it into a painting.

So on a warm night in September in 1888,

he comes down from his little apartment

in Place Lamartine in Arles

and goes around the corner and he sees this.

Great expanse of the River Rhone

with the city of Arles reduced to a little rim of human activity,

lit by rather sulphurous gas lights.

And somehow, this amazing moment speaks to him

that he can actually do this cosmic painting.

And he creates a kind of compositional double trinity.

The first trinity is of land and water and sky.

And the land is this little spit of the bank

with those very Japanese boats tied up in the harbour there.