One of Vincent Van Gogh’s most vibrant moments on canvas is coming to Los Angeles: Tarascon Stagecoach (October 1888), a rare painting from the artist's Arles period, will be on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), marking its first appearance on the West Coast, as part of a new exhibition called "Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Foundation," scheduled to run from from February 22 to July 5, 2026.
The show encompasses a landmark gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, which is donating its entire 63-piece Impressionist collection to three American museums: LACMA, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and MoMA.
Tarascon Stagecoach will headline the exceptional program. Painted during one of Van Gogh’s most feverishly productive stretches, the painting captures a bright yellow coach waiting in the dusty courtyard of an inn in Arles. The scene is tied to the writer Alphonse Daudet’s Tartarin de Tarascon, a satirical novel Van Gogh was reading at the time. The book features a weary stagecoach reminiscing about its life.
After passing through the hands of Parisian dealer Père Tanguy and Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso—who reportedly hid it in his attic after friends mocked it—Tarascon Stagecoach ended up in South America, effectively becoming the first Van Gogh to cross the Atlantic. In 1950, New York businessman Henry Pearlman bought it in a whirlwind deal involving cash, four lesser works, two Renoirs and a Soutine.
For decades, Tarascon Stagecoach has been part of the Pearlman Foundation’s long-term loan to Princeton University Art Museum, occasionally touring internationally. But its new homecoming will be permanent: after a stint at LACMA, the painting will travel to Brooklyn in autumn 2026 and to New York’s MoMA in 2027, before returning to L.A. alongside six other works from the collection.