Choux rouges et ail

In Paris in 1887 Van Gogh was teaching himself colour theory on whatever was cheap, and it does not get much cheaper than a couple of red cabbages and some garlic on a table. The point was never the vegetables. It was the contrast, the reds and greens set against yellow, the kind of paired opposites he was reading about and testing on the plate in front of him. For nearly a century the museum called this Red Cabbages and Onions, until a chef looked closely in 2023 and pointed out that those bulbs are clearly garlic. One thing has quietly changed since he painted it. The tablecloth, now a dull grey-blue, was originally purple, and the pigment has faded over the years.