While in Arles, Van Gogh painted two very similar portraits of Madame Ginoux, the proprietress of the Café de la Gare. The first version, which he described in a letter of November 1888 as "an Arlésienne … slashed on in an hour," must be the more thinly and summarily executed portrait in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. In it, a parasol and gloves lie on the table instead of books. This portrait may have been painted for the sitter just before Van Gogh left Arles in May 1889.

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