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Two years before this, Van Gogh was painting Dutch peasants in earth browns and thought that was his subject. Then in 1886 he moved to Paris, into his brother Theo's flat on the rue Lepic in Montmartre, and walked straight into Impressionism and the new pointillist dabbing of colour. This is the boulevard at the foot of his own street, a junction he crossed all the time, painted in 1887 in loose separate strokes and pale winter light. The figures are just quick marks. Rue Lepic, where the brothers lived, would begin just past the right edge of the picture.