Brown becomes scarce

The record dates Field with Poppies to 1889, and the measured palette reads as brown. That reading has become scarce: six of the 116 works dated 1889 return brown as a dominant family, against eighteen of the twenty-five dated 1884. In proportion that is one of the largest movements any family makes across this catalogue.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 71 by 91 centimetres and is held by the Kunsthalle Bremen, which holds one work in this catalogue. Poppies are named in seven titles here, one of them dated 1889.

Fields, at their peak

The word field appears in forty-one titles across the ten years, and seventeen of them are dated 1889 — more than any other year, ahead of ten in 1888 and eight in 1890. Saint-Remy, in the titles at least, is where the catalogue becomes a catalogue of fields. That the palette measurement here runs against its year is worth recording precisely because the year is otherwise so consistent; one entry does not overturn a count, and it is not offered as though it did.