Portrait of Père Tanguy

Van Gogh painted this in the winter of 1887 into 1888, in his last months in Paris before he left for Arles that February. The sitter is Julien Tanguy, the colour merchant at the foot of Montmartre whom painters called Père Tanguy. Van Gogh sat him square to the viewer, hands folded, in front of a wall of Japanese woodblock prints. He made two versions with the prints behind him. The larger one ended up with the sculptor Rodin in Paris, and this smaller one crossed the Atlantic. In 1941 the Hollywood actor Edward G. Robinson, best known for playing gangsters, bought it for his collection at home. After his divorce in 1956 he had to sell almost everything, and in 1957 the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos bought his paintings, this portrait among them. It is believed to have stayed with the Niarchos family ever since.