Montmartre: behind the Moulin de la Galette

Montmartre had belonged to Paris since 1860, and by the summer of 1887 the city was climbing the hill in stone. Van Gogh was living a few streets below, on the rue Lepic, and instead of the crowded side of the Moulin de la Galette, the old grain mill that had become a dance hall, he set up behind it. What he painted is the working back of the hill: allotment plots and sheds in the foreground, the ground rising away to the northwest, the hills of Meudon far off. At roughly 81 by 100 centimetres this is one of the largest landscapes he ever made, put down in bright colour over a light ground with everything from long strokes to quick specks of paint. He thought well enough of it to send it to the Salon des Indépendants in 1888.