Portrait of Etienne-Lucien Martin

By the autumn of 1887 Van Gogh had been in Paris for over a year, and he had talked a restaurant owner on the avenue de Clichy, Etienne-Lucien Martin, into letting him hang his own paintings and those of his friends on the walls. This portrait was his thank-you. He painted Martin as le patron, the boss, in his working clothes, and toned the colours down from something brighter to these muted browns and greens. Martin never got to keep it. Soon after the show opened the two men fell out, Martin complaining that the pictures were putting his customers off their food, and the paintings came down early. The red pigments Van Gogh did use have faded since, so the whole thing looks even quieter now than he left it.