Van Gogh painted several still lifes of shoes or boots during his Paris period. This picture, painted later in Arles, evinces a unique return to the earlier motif. Unlike the first works, Van Gogh has here placed the shoes within a specific spatial context, namely, the red-tile floor of the Yellow House. Not only may we identify the setting, but perhaps the owner of the boots as well. It has been suggested that "this still life of a peasant's old boots" may have been those of the peasant Patience Escalier, whose portrait Van Gogh executed around the same time, in late summer 1888.

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