Still Life: Two Red Herrings

Van Gogh's Two Red Herrings (1889) was painted at Saint-Rémy during one of the still-life sessions he used to maintain his practice between episodes of illness — the humble subject requiring less physical and emotional expenditure than outdoor landscape work or figure painting with models. The red herrings connect to several strands of his work simultaneously: the Dutch fish still lifes of his Paris period, his ongoing identification with working-class food as legitimate artistic subject matter, and the specific color challenge of rendering the red-orange of salted, dried fish against a neutral ground. By 1889 his Saint-Rémy technique had reached a state of extraordinary refinement, and even the most modest still-life subjects received the full application of his mature brushwork: thick impasto, directional marks that build form and surface texture simultaneously, color applied fresh without blending. Writing to Theo from Saint-Rémy in December 1889 about his still-life practice, he described using these simpler subjects as a way of staying technically active between the more ambitious landscape and figure work. The herring's specific physical character — the dried, preserved quality of the flesh, the scales' reflective surface, the deep red-orange of the cured exterior — gave him material for a color study as concentrated as any more elaborate still life.

The two herrings are rendered with Van Gogh's Saint-Rémy intensity: the characteristic thick, swirling brushwork that gives his late still lifes an almost sculptural quality. His palette here is relatively restrained — the specific red-orange of salted herring against a neutral or dark ground — but the application of paint is anything but restrained. Each stroke is visible and directional, building the fish's form through accumulated marks that convey both physical presence and the emotional intensity that characterized all his late work.