Madame Ginoux was the owner of the Café de la Gare with her husband Joseph-Michel Ginoux. A café that Vincent frequently visited. Vincent used the orange-yellow sunflower color as the background for the dark figure of Madame Ginoux.
Vincent describes Madame Ginoux as a typical woman of Arles: “She wears the sober regional black costume with a white lace scarf at the neckline and the Arlesian headdress with It’s wide, trailing black ribbon”.
Vincent was charmed by many women from the Provence:
“The woman here are beautiful, not for their shape, but rather for the beautiful lined and bright colors of their clothes and the luminosity of their skin.”
Gauguin also created two versions of the portrait of Madame Ginoux: