Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin

By 1887 Van Gogh was living in Paris with his brother Theo, and his palette had just cracked open into color under the influence of the Impressionists. The woman here is Agostina Segatori, who ran the Cafe du Tambourin nearby. She had modelled for Manet and Corot in her younger years, saved her earnings, and opened her own Italian cafe where painters gathered and hung their work. Van Gogh, too poor to pay for meals, traded pictures for food and even showed his Japanese prints on her walls, and for a while the two of them were involved. She sits alone at one of the little tambourine-shaped tables, a glass before her and a cigarette in hand. The affair soured and ended that summer, and when the cafe went bankrupt his paintings were seized along with the rest of the furniture.