Terrace of a Cafe on Montmartre (La Guinguette)

Van Gogh had been in Paris only a few months when he painted this in October 1886. He had come from the Netherlands that spring to live with his brother Theo, and his palette was still the brown, earthy one he brought with him, before the city's Impressionists coaxed him toward brighter colour. A guinguette was a cheap open-air tavern, and Montmartre was still half-countryside, a hill of vegetable gardens and old windmills on the northern edge of Paris. He shows the cafe terrace nearly empty under bare autumn trees, a few small figures strung along a wooden fence in cool grey light.