Grass and Butterflies

This picture comes with an argument attached about when and where it was made. The old catalogue numbers place it in the south of France, around 1889 or 1890, among the grass and garden studies from Arles and Saint-Rémy. More recent research, the Van Gogh Museum included, dates it to Paris in the summer of 1887, when Van Gogh was painting the parks and market gardens of Montmartre and Asnières and testing how far he could push pure colour. Under its French title, Coin de jardin avec papillons, it hung for years in Amsterdam as a loan from a private owner, went to auction in New York in 2018 without finding a buyer, and sold there in May 2024.