Dish with Citrus Fruit

In February 1887 Van Gogh was working indoors, in the flat he shared with his brother Theo in Montmartre. A Paris winter kept him off the streets, and small still lifes were work he could do at a table, one arrangement at a time.

The paint here is thinned almost to a wash. He was using the method known as peinture a l'essence, oil diluted with turpentine and laid on an absorbent ground, which dries matt and slightly translucent rather than glossy.

The fruit and the background are built up from parallel lines and hatching, done with his thinnest brushes. Some of those strokes are less than half a millimetre wide, on a canvas only 21 centimetres tall.