View of Montmartre with Quarry

Van Gogh moved in with Theo at 54 rue Lepic in June 1886, halfway up the slope of Montmartre, and the top of the hill was still not quite Paris. It had windmills, allotments, cheap open-air cafés and the worked ground of quarries that had been cut into the butte for gypsum, with the city building over more of it every year. Through that autumn and winter he climbed up and painted the hill repeatedly, still in the dark earth colours he had brought from Brabant. This is one of the smallest of those views, 22 by 33 centimetres. He drew the same quarry as well, and one of those drawings had its attribution refused by the Van Gogh Museum in 2001, until a second version surfaced in a private collection and in 2018 the museum accepted both as his.