The Hill of Montmartre

Van Gogh had just arrived in Paris in the spring of 1886, moving into his brother Theo's small apartment at the foot of Montmartre. The hill was still half countryside then, its slopes dotted with old windmills and a working stone quarry, not the tourist Montmartre of later postcards. He climbed it and painted this wide, quiet view out in the open air. The browns and dull yellows still belong to his Dutch years in Nuenen, but look at the sky and the patches of grass and you can catch him testing brighter greens and blues. Two years of Paris would burn the mud out of his palette for good.