Windmills on Montmartre by Vincent Van Gogh Table Number

Windmills on Montmartre by Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas 1886, is a landscape painting of a hilltop in Paris with a pair of windmills rising from the earthy landscape into the bright, pale grey, cloudy sky. Painted in the year that the artist moved to France to study the art of the avant-garde Impressionist painters, the picture still retains much of the sombre earth toned palette of his earlier Dutch realist paintings. Van Gogh depicts the famous artist district of Paris in a range of light to dark tonal values, contrasting the warm tones of earth and greenery with the cooler, neutral greys of sky. The vertical windmills with their enormous blades cut sharply into the sky, dramatically lit in chiaroscuro. Van Gogh painted several views of the famous windmills of Montmartre during his very productive years of study in Paris. Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) was a Dutch painter of the Post-Impressionist movement known for bold, expressive drawing, swirling brushstrokes and intense, heightened colours. In early adulthood Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, teacher and pastor before taking up the full time study of drawing and painting in his late twenties. Influenced by Rembrandt, the 19th century Realists and Barbizon school, Van Gogh’s early paintings featured studies of workers and peasants in sombre earth tones. Moving to France in 1886, Van Gogh met with the startling innovations of the Impressionist painters and began to apply their approach to colour and subject matter, which continued into the mature style for which the artist is most renowned. Van Gogh produced many hundreds of drawings and paintings including portraits, landscapes, still life and flower paintings, and numerous self-portraits that became a dominating influence on the modern art of the 20th century and made him one of the most popular artists of all time.