Portrait of Léonie Rose Charbuy-Davy

Van Gogh's two years in Paris (1886–1888) were a period of radical self-reinvention driven by direct contact with the most advanced painting of the age. Portraits of acquaintances and Montmartre social figures, like this 1887 study of Léonie Rose Charbuy-Davy, served as his primary laboratory for testing the colour and technique he was absorbing from Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painters. He attended the studio of Fernand Cormon, where he met Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard, and through his brother Theo — a dealer at Goupil & Cie — he had access to the paintings of Monet, Pissarro, and Degas. The Pointillist experiments of Seurat and Signac, which he encountered at the Salon des Indépendants in 1886, particularly affected his treatment of backgrounds in Paris portraits: the mosaic of small, separate strokes visible behind the sitter represents a direct engagement with Neo-Impressionist divisionism, which Van Gogh absorbed without ever fully adopting its systematic rigour. Held at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Small, mosaic-like brushstrokes in varied hues — characteristic of the Pointillist influence Van Gogh absorbed in Paris — animate the background. The face is rendered with more blended, attentive strokes, creating a focal warmth amid the vibrant surrounding colour. Complementary contrasts in the background heighten the sitter's presence.