Red Herrings and Apples

Smoked herring was cheap food, and it had been on painters' tables since the Dutch still lifes of the 17th century. Van Gogh painted the same fish more than once in the 1880s, in Paris and then at Arles. Bernard set his out with apples on a panel of 32 by 40 centimetres, and the museum's label gives a span of years, about 1904 to 1908. The French name for them, hareng saur, comes from an old Dutch word for dry, which is what the salt and the smoke were for.