La Colline de Montmartre avec carrière

In 1886 Van Gogh moved to Paris to live with his brother Theo, and Montmartre was not yet the district we picture. On the far side of the hill it was still half countryside, with kitchen gardens, a working stone quarry off the rue Caulaincourt, and old windmills whose sails he shows poking above the ridge. He painted several views out here that year. The colours are still earthy and grey, close to the sober Dutch pictures he had brought with him. Only over the following months, as he met Pissarro, Bernard and other painters, would his palette begin to brighten. He hoped a familiar, homely scene like this might sell. It did not.