Fabriken in Clichy

In the summer of 1887 Vincent van Gogh was living in Paris with his brother Theo and walking out on weekends to the industrial edge of the city, the riverside suburbs of Asnieres and Clichy. He went with younger painters such as Paul Signac, and he was watching closely what Georges Seurat and the pointillists were doing with small, separated strokes of colour. You can see it here in the orderly dashes of paint. What he chose to put down, though, is not a pretty view but a row of factories pumping smoke into the sky, stacked in three broad bands of field, buildings and cloud. Out in the field two tiny figures stand together, easy to miss, perhaps a pair of lovers. This is Paris looking outward at its own smoke, a year before van Gogh left for the south.