Restaurant de la Sirène at Asnières, The

The Restaurant de la Sirène at Asnières, now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, is one of the most fully realized of Van Gogh's Paris period outdoor restaurant subjects. The Sirène — a riverside restaurant on the Seine at Asnières — was a typical suburban dining establishment catering to the weekend visitors who came by train from Paris to enjoy the river, and Van Gogh painted it with the directness of someone who had actually eaten there. He was working in and around Asnières throughout the spring and summer of 1887 alongside Signac, and the restaurant interiors and exteriors of the suburb were natural subjects for someone exploring modern life subjects alongside the landscape and river paintings. The Ashmolean Museum's acquisition places this among Oxford's great art holdings — the museum has been collecting French nineteenth-century work since the early twentieth century and holds a distinguished group of Post-Impressionist paintings. Van Gogh's treatment of the restaurant facade demonstrates his 1887 technique: the architectural surface rendered with broken color and varied brushwork, the surrounding figures and vegetation handled more loosely, the whole composition lighter and more chromatic than anything from his Dutch period but still more structured than pure Impressionism.

The restaurant exterior is rendered with Van Gogh's developing Impressionist approach — broken color, directional brushwork, a palette lighter than his Dutch period. The sign and architectural details of the building are observed with specific attention while the surrounding figures and vegetation are handled more loosely. Warm sunlight on the exterior creates a pleasantly direct chromatic effect.