Portrait of Etienne-Lucien Martin

Étienne-Lucien Martin was a minor figure in the Montmartre social world Van Gogh inhabited during his Paris years, and this 1887 portrait is one of the more obscure works from that productive period of self-reinvention. Van Gogh painted acquaintances, café companions, and fellow artists repeatedly during his Paris residence, using them as models for his colour and technique experiments without transforming them into the significant portrait subjects — the Roulins, Dr Gachet, Dr Rey — that his later work would produce. The portrait reflects a specific moment in his development: the Neo-Impressionist influence is visible in the background's divided colour marks, while the face still shows some of the searching directness of his Dutch-period portraiture. Van Gogh was testing rather than fully adopting the new techniques, maintaining the emotional directness of his earlier work while expanding his technical vocabulary. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Short, directional strokes in the Pointillist manner build up the background, while the face is handled with looser, more conventional Impressionist touches. The painting shows Van Gogh testing rather than mastering the new techniques.