Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Paris) is the subject of many drawings, sketches and paintings by Vincent van Gogh in 1886 and 1887 after he moved to Montmartre in Paris from the Netherlands. While in Paris, Van Gogh transformed the subjects, color and techniques that he used in creating still life paintings.
He saw the work and met the founders and key artists of Impressionism, Pointillism and other movements and began incorporating what he learned into his work. Japanese art, ukiyo-e, and woodblock prints also influenced his approach to composition and painting.
There was a gradual change from the somber mood of his work in the Netherlands to a far more varied and expressive approach as he began introducing brighter color into his work. He painted many still life paintings of flowers, experimenting with color, light and techniques he learned from several different modern artists before moving on to other subjects.
By 1887, his work incorporated several elements of modern art as he began to approach his mature oeuvre. Excellent examples are the Pairs of Shoes paintings, where in the space of four paintings one can observe the difference between the first pair of boots made in 1886, similar to some of his earlier peasant paintings from Nuenen, to the painting made in 1887 that incorporates complementary, contrasting colors and use of light. Another example are the Blue Vases paintings made in 1887 that incorporate both color and technique improvements that result in uplifting, colorful paintings of flowers.
In the spring of 1887, Van Gogh left the city proper for a visit to Asnières with his friend Émile Bernard. While there his work was further transformed stylistically and through the use of bright, contrasting color and light. See his works from Asnières and Seine.
Background
Netherlands From 1880 to 1885, Van Gogh began working as an artist in earnest. He was influenced not only by the great Dutch masters but also to a considerable extent by his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve a Dutch realist painter and a leading member of the Hague School.Wallace pp. 40, 69-70.
Van Gogh's palette consisted mainly of dark earth tones, particularly dark brown. His brother Theo, an art dealer, commented that his work was too somber to be marketable and encouraged him to explore modern art, particularly Impressionism for its bright, colorful paintings.Tralbaut pp.123-160
Modern art In 1886, Van Gogh left the Netherlands and traveled to Paris to explore emerging artistic movements under the guidance and continued support of his brother Theo van Gogh, an art dealer. Surprised that Vincent had come to Paris unannounced, and in opposition to their conversations about timing of his arrival, Vincent stayed in Theo's apartment on Rue Laval until a larger apartment could be acquired.Beaujean, 28 For four months, Van Gogh studied with Fernand Cormon, painting plaster casts, live nude models and props available at Cormon's studio. Cormon also encouraged open-air painting. There he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Émile Bernard, and Louis Anquetin.Beaujean, 27-28 Through Theo and artistic social circles he also met Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro,Beaujean, 38 Paul Signac, Georges Seurat,Beaujean, 31-32 and Paul Gauguin. Through the fellowship with these men, he was introduced to Impressionists, Symbolists, Pointillists, and Japanese art, Ukiyo-e, and woodcut prints. In spite of his unusual demeanor, disheveled clothes and often time frightening manner, Paris was the one place where Van Gogh developed friendships with other artists. So much so that when Toulouse-Lautrec heard disparaging remarks against Van Gogh, he challenged the man to a duel.Wallace, 40, 50-51 Seeing and trading artwork with the Parisian avant-garde artists, Van Gogh understood what Theo had been trying to tell him for years about modern art.Wallace, 42 He was able to experiment with each of the movements to develop his own style, becoming what some say is "one of the most important artists in modern art."
Romanticism Romanticism was an art and literature movement formed by people looking to escape the drab world. Its characteristics are paintings of "exotic lands" with grandiose feeling and intense color.Munro, 216-217 Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli developed a highly individual Romantic style of painting with richly colored, dappled, and textured painting and glazed surfaces.Silverman, 438 Monticelli was a French painter of the generation preceding the Impressionists who was friends with Narcisse Diaz, a member of the Barbizon school, and the two often painted together in the Fontainebleau Forest. Vincent van Gogh, greatly admired his work after seeing it in Paris when he arrived there in 1886.Van Gogh and Monticelli Exhibition Retrieved 2026-01-29 Van Gogh was influenced by the richness that he perceived in Monticelli's work.1888 24 April, Letter to Theo In 1890, Van Gogh and his brother Theo were instrumental in publishing the first book about Monticelli.Turner, 314.Bio Kunstmuseum Basel Retrieved 5 June 2011
Impressionism The Impressionism movement was a change from traditional artistic techniques. With Impressionism the intention was to depict colors and images the way they are seen, not the way that artists were taught to paint them. Aspects of Impressionism include using gleaming spots of light, color in shadows, colors straight from the tube in dots or dashes, and dissolving firm outlines.Beaujean, 30
Neo-Impressionism Van Gogh was influenced by Impressionists Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, but even more so by Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat, partly because of the use of dots of contrasting colors to intensify the image, a technique called Pointillism. Van Gogh likened painting with constructing small, thoughtfully placed dashes of color to writing "words in a speech or a letter".Beaujean, 31
Cloisonnism Cloisonnism is a style of Post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin on occasion of the Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888.Dujardin, Édouard: Aux XX et aux Indépendants: le Cloisonismé (sic!), Revue indépendante, Paris, March 1888, pp. 487-492 Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started painting in this style in the late 19th century. The name evokes the technique of cloisonné, where wires (cloisons or "compartments") are soldered to the body of the piece, filled with powdered glass, and then fired. Many of the same painters also described their works as Synthetism a closely related movement.Hamilton, 105-106
Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism. Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, thick application of paint, distinctive brush strokes, and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colour.Hamilton, 228-231
Japanese ukiyo-e Characteristic features of Ukiyo-e woodprints include their ordinary subject matter, the distinctive cropping of their compositions, bold and assertive outlines, absent or unusual perspective, flat regions of uniform colour, uniform lighting, absence of chiaroscuro, and their emphasis on decorative patterns. One or more of these features can be found in numbers of Vincent's paintings from his Antwerp period onwards. Van Gogh wrote, "If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophical and intelligent, who spends his time… studying a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant, and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure… isn't it almost a true religion which these simple Japanese teach us, who live in nature as though they themselves are flowers. And you cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much gayer and happier."Fell (1997), 79
Color theory and technique
One of the most transformational elements of Van Gogh's work during his period in Paris was his use of color. Van Gogh used complementary, contrasting colors to bring an intensity to his work. Two complementary colors of the same degree of vividness and brightness placed next to one another produce an intense reaction, called the "law of simultaneous contrast."Fell (2005) p. 64
From his days in the Netherlands Van Gogh became familiar with Delacroix's color theory and was fascinated by color.Wallace pp. 39, 75 While in Nuenen Van Gogh became familiar with Michel Eugène Chevreul's laws in weaving to maximize the intensity of colors through their contrast to adjacent colors.Silverman, p. 140
In Paris, Van Gogh eagerly studied Seurat's use of complementary colors. Excited to try out complementary studies, Van Gogh would divide a large canvas into several rectangular sections, trying out "all the colors of the rainbow." There he was also exposed through his brother Theo to Adolphe Monticelli's still life work with flowers, which he admired. He saw Monticelli's use of color as an expansion of Delacroix's theories of color and contrast. He also admired the effect Monticelli created by heavy application of paint.
In the still life series, particularly of flowers, Van Gogh experimented with color relationship, such as complementary, contrasting colors which are colors across from one another on the color wheel. A second color relationship, harmonious colors are colors adjacent to one another on the color wheel. He also used the trio of colors, where the relationship on the color wheel forms a triangle.
Balls of yarn To help him choose colors for his studies, Van Gogh collected strands of different shades of yarn to experiment with color combinations. He rolled selected strands together into balls in combinations matching specific paintings, such as the yellow and ocher combinations found in Still Life with Quince Pears and Lemons (F383). The box and his sample balls of yarn have survived and are held by the Van Gogh Museum.
Still life Soon after Van Gogh arrived in Paris, he began painting still lifes with the goal of experimenting with contrasting colors. He wrote to a friend in England that his goal was to create "intense coloration, not gray harmony."
His started with still lifes of flowers. At first his still lifes maintained the subdued tones that he used in the Netherlands. The more he became immersed in his painting, he continually added brighter colors to his work until he was using colors directly from the tube. Then he moved on to other subjects from everyday life that reflect his use of vivid colors and a free brushstroke.
Van Gogh courted Agostina Segatori, the owner of the Café du Tambourin on the boulevard de Clichy, for a period of time and gave her paintings of flowers, "which would last for ever".
The energy that Van Gogh put into his Still Life paintings is representative of his habit for "working systematically, concentrating on a theme until he had exhausted it."Thomson, 46
Flowers Flowers were the subject of many of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris, due in great part to his regard for flowers. Knowing Van Gogh's interest in making still life paintings of flowers, friends and acquaintances in Paris sent bouquets of flowers weekly for his paintings.Mancoff, p. 32 He also purchased inexpensive bouquets himself, choosing flowers in a variety of types and colors for his paintings. Many of his still life paintings of flowers reflect a sense of overabundance of European still lifes, where blossoms fill the canvas, blooms spill out of the vase or stems of flowers teeter on the edge of the vase.Ross, 56.