Portrait of Léonie Rose Charbuy-Davy

By the spring of 1887 Van Gogh had been in Paris a year, living with his brother Theo and slowly trading the dark browns of his Dutch pictures for lighter, broken colour. The woman here is Léonie Rose Charbuy-Davy, and there was a practical reason to paint her kindly. She was the niece of Pierre Firmin-Martin, a dealer who now and then hung Van Gogh's canvases in his shop, and in these years almost no one else would. She sits beside a cradle with a fire glowing at her side. Van Gogh left the picture at Theo's apartment, and it stayed in the family for decades before reaching the museum that carries his name.