La Mousmé

In the summer of 1888 van Gogh was in Arles, in the south of France, and he had decided the place was his own private Japan. He was reading a popular novel of the moment, Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème, about a Frenchman in Nagasaki, and from it he borrowed the word mousmé, which he explained to his brother meant a Japanese girl of about twelve to fourteen. So the title is his, and so is the fantasy layered over a real local sitter. Look at how flat and firm the outlines are, and how the striped bodice and the dotted skirt sit as pattern rather than fabric. That is him borrowing from Japanese prints he collected. In her hand is a sprig of oleander, a flower he kept painting that year and associated with life and health. He finished her in a single week, in late July, and told his brother the effort had cost him.