Chopes de bière

In the autumn of 1885 Van Gogh, still living in the Dutch village of Nuenen, set up a run of plain still lifes, birds' nests, potatoes, old pots, and here three earthenware beer tankards on a bare table, one tipped on its side. These were not meant to sell. He was using them to study colour, reading about how Delacroix built a picture from a few contrasting tones, and testing it on whatever stood in his room. The palette is still the brown and grey of his Dutch years, warmed only by a little blue in the shadows. Within a couple of months he left for Antwerp and then Paris, where everything he was learning about colour here would suddenly turn bright. For now it is three beer mugs catching the low light.