Place de Clichy

In the winter of 1887 the avenue running north out of this square briefly became the headquarters of a small revolt. Van Gogh rented the dining room of a cheap restaurant at 43 avenue de Clichy and hung it with his own canvases alongside those of Bernard, Anquetin and Toulouse-Lautrec, painters he grouped together as the petit boulevard, to set them apart from the established Impressionists he called the grand boulevard. He hoped to bring Seurat and Signac in as well. The group never showed together again, and the restaurant went bankrupt the following June. Signac was 24 that winter and had been painting in dots for about two years. He worked this square on a piece of wood barely larger than a sheet of writing paper, and it reached the Metropolitan in 1975 with the Robert Lehman collection.