Quinces, lemons, pears and grapes

By the autumn of 1887 Van Gogh had been in Paris about a year and a half, and colour was what he worked at hardest. This still life is largely an experiment in yellow: quinces, lemons, pears and grapes set down so that nearly everything on the canvas is a different shade of the same colour, with only a little green, blue and pink pushing against it. He inscribed the picture to his brother Theo, the art dealer who had been telling him for years to brighten his palette. The frame is his own work too, painted in yellow and ochre with short strokes, and it is the only frame he painted that is known to survive. Under the fruit there is a landscape he had put on this same canvas earlier and then covered over.