Rooftops in Paris

Van Gogh reached Paris in the first months of 1886 and moved in with his brother Theo. This is the view out of the window in Montmartre, roofs and chimneys running off towards the city, painted in greys and dull browns. He had come straight from Holland and was still working like a Dutch realist, with the palette he had used for peasants and their dark kitchens. Within a year that was gone. He met Gauguin, Bernard and the other painters of the small Paris cafes, saw Impressionist colour at close range, and his canvases turned bright and thickly loaded. This one sat in private hands from the 1920s until it came up at auction in London in February 2007, where the National Gallery of Ireland bought it, the first work by him the gallery had ever owned.