Montmartre, 1887

The record dates Vegetable Gardens in Montmartre to 1887, the second Paris year. Montmartre is the dominant location of the Paris period in this catalogue: ten works name it in their titles, eight dated 1886 and two 1887, alongside sixteen dated 1887 that name Asnières, downstream on the Seine. Read chronologically, the record shows the painter working outward from the hill in the first Paris year and out to the river suburbs in the second.

What the record gives

At 81 x 100 cm this is among the largest canvases of the Paris years catalogued here — of the works dated 1886 and 1887 whose measurements the record carries, only one is larger. It is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette returns yellow as the dominant family.

Cultivated ground

The record files this under landscape and the title specifies vegetable gardens: worked ground rather than scenery, inside a city. It is a subject that connects the Paris years back to Nuenen, where the catalogue records diggers, potato lifters and peasant women in fields, and forward to Arles and Auvers, where wheat fields and vineyards become the standing subject. Agricultural labour is the one thread that runs unbroken through all five places in this chronology.