MONTMARTRE
By VINCENT VAN GAGH
"MONTMARTRE" (17.8"/13.5" inches) oil on canvas, Painted by VINCENT VAN GOGH in 1886 (Paris). Now it is in The Art Institute of Chicago.
ONE of the first paintings made by VAN GOGH in Paris. It shows already his rapid assimilation of French art. It is not yet fully Impressionist, but moves beyond Impressionism and points to the twentieth century in its graphic brushwork and in the search for a delicate atmosphere which belongs not only to the visual but to the feel of a landscape to a spectator with a decided emotional bias in looking.
The key greyness, pervading elements so different as sky, earth, and distant city- a vague ocean reaching to the horizon touches also the colour of the fences and the lamp posts. & in these varied substances is distinguished by a nuancing of warm and cool as refined as Manet's a born Parisian.
As in the latter's work, scattered touches of colour, here yellow and blue, together with some points of black, punctuate the greyness. But most remarkable is the quality of the greens- indescribably tinged by the greyness-and the purplish reds of the barely suggested, still lifeless trees. The painting of the lamps is a subtle piece of gradation of grey tones.
A precisely noted luminosity, almost wintry, is sustained throughout. The brushwork, adapting itself flexibly to the substance and directions of objects, is another source of life. Within this delicate harmony of light grey tones, vaporous and filmy.
We are surprised to discover a precise armature in the drawing, in which the reality of things and the less evident reality of the observer's perspective con stitute a finely rhythmical structure of verticals and diagonals.
The irregularities of the fence and the posts, the tiltings and subtle waviness which extends even to the surface of the foreground, are highly realistic and at the same time the discoveries of an emotionally charged vision.
VINCENT VAN GOGH PAINTINGS