Grapes

By the autumn of 1887 Vincent van Gogh had been in Paris for about two years, long enough to trade the dark browns of his Dutch pictures for the bright palette of the painters he had met there. That season he worked through a run of fruit still lifes almost as colour exercises, and here the subject is simply grapes, purple set against yellow so that each pushes the other brighter. The paint is laid on thick, and the short strokes around the fruit keep the whole surface restless. In November he hung pictures like this one in a group show he organised for young painters at a Paris restaurant, where his friend the painter Émile Bernard called such canvases his violent still lifes.