Allotment with Sunflower

By 1887 Montmartre had belonged to Paris for nearly 30 years, and the top of the hill was still working ground: fenced allotments, sheds and kitchen gardens rented by people who lived further down. Van Gogh walked up there through that spring and summer and painted the plots again and again. In this one a sunflower stands at the edge of a fence, and along the left horizon you can make out the chimneys of the factories at Clichy, the industrial suburb just beyond the city's northern edge. The sunflower is growing where somebody planted it. The Arles bouquets, cut and crammed into vases, came a year later. On the back of this canvas there is another painting, a peasant woman's head he had made in Nuenen in the Netherlands, because reusing old linen saved the price of new.