Vincent van Gogh. The Bedroom, 1889. The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.

Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 painting, “Bedroom,” among his most widely revered, will be on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena from December 9 to March 6, 2017, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago’s 19th century collection.

Described by the Norton Simon Museum as “a meditation on friendship, hope and crushing disappointment,” Van Gogh’s “Bedroom” serves not only as a kind of self-portrait, but also as a symbol of the artist’s wandering existence and search for an elusive sense of repose.

The second of three versions of the interior scene, the Chicago “Bedroom” was painted by the artist while at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in September 1889.

The artist produced three almost identical paintings on the theme of his bedroom. The first, now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, was executed in October 1888 and damaged during a flood while the painter was in hospital in Arles.

Almost a year later, Van Gogh made two copies of the painting, one of which is this one that will be in Pasadena on Friday; the other, in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, was produced for Van Gogh’s family in Holland and is smaller.

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and said he wanted to express the tranquility and bring out the simplicity of his bedroom using the symbolism of colors. In the letter, he described “the pale, lilac walls, the uneven, faded red of the floor, the chrome-yellow chairs and bed, the pillows and sheet in very pale lime green, the blood-red blanket, the orange-colored wash stand, the blue wash basin, and the green window.”

“I wanted to express absolute repose with these different colors,” the artist wrote.

The Norton Simon exhibit marks the first time the painting has been on view on the West Coast. “Bedroom” will hang in the Museum’s 19th century art wing, surrounded by the Simon’s own important collection of Van Gogh works.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.

For more information, visit www.nortonsimon.org.