The yellow house - Martin Gayford

From October to December 1888, Paul Gauguin shared a home in Arles with Vincent van Gogh. This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive.

The denouement of their life together has entered into folk lore. Two months after Gauguin arrived in Arles, Van Gogh suffered a psychological crisis. He spent most of the rest of his life in a mental institution. Gauguin fled from Arles, and they never saw each other again.

But in the brief period during which they worked together a stream of masterpieces was created within the studio they shared, including Van Gogh's paintings of his own chair and Gauguin's. Meanwhile his Sunflowers decorated Gauguin's bedroom wall.

Here for the first time, the full story of their life together is told. Making use of fresh research and new evidence, Martin Gayford describes not only how they painted and exchanged ideas, but also the texture of their everyday life. As well as the great pictures, he considers the way these two geniuses cooked, and drank, their clothes and daily routine - and also their inner thoughts, hopes, fears and dreams.

The book culminates in a persuasive analysis of Van Gogh's mental illness - and the swirling thoughts that led him to slice off an ear and present it to a prostitute. This is a novel type of biography, more drama than epic. Its aim is to put you, the reader, inside the little four-roomed dwelling which these two turbulent men inhabited: the Yellow House.