Rooftops in Paris

Rooftops in Paris (1886) at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin depicts the view that Van Gogh observed daily from his Montmartre apartment — the dense urban fabric of Parisian rooftops stretching toward the southern horizon, with chimneys, mansard windows, and the grey-blue haze of the city's atmosphere. He made multiple rooftop panoramas from the Lepic Street apartment he shared with Theo, and each represents a slightly different moment in his chromatic development as his palette lightened and diversified under Impressionist influence. This 1886 version, relatively early in his Paris period, still shows something of the Dutch atmospheric tonal approach — the grey light, the unified tonal register — before the more vivid chromatic experiments of 1887. The National Gallery of Ireland holds this as part of a collection that includes important nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European works.

The rooftop panorama is organized into horizontal registers of grey zinc, chimney stacks, and the pale Paris sky above. Van Gogh's evolving palette brings varied color to an apparently monochromatic urban subject — blue-grays of rooftops, warm ochres of brick, cool blue of sky. Paint is applied with the energy of his developing Parisian style.