Still Life with Bloaters

Van Gogh's Paris years (1886–88) represent his most deliberate period of self-education, and the bloater still lifes belong to a specific strand of that education: the determination to elevate humble food to the dignity of high still-life subject matter. Bloaters — whole smoked herring — were preserved working-class food, cheap and pungent, nothing remotely like the elaborate Flemish banquet pieces or Chardin's kitchen arrangements that formed the still-life tradition he was absorbing. Van Gogh painted smoked fish repeatedly in Paris, treating them with the same serious observation he gave his famous potato and peasant studies in Nuenen. The Kunstmuseum Basel's possession of this work connects it to one of the strongest Swiss holdings of Post-Impressionism; Basel assembled major Van Gogh works early in the twentieth century, when prices were still accessible and when Swiss collectors proved more discerning than many of their French counterparts. By 1886 Van Gogh was already encountering Impressionism through his brother Theo's connections at Boussod & Valadon, and his palette for the fish shows a brightening from the dark Nuenen earth tones, the silvery fish surface becoming a study in subtle color rather than mere documentation.

The bloaters are rendered with direct observation of their silvery, slightly golden surface and elongated forms. Van Gogh's Paris palette brings more chromatic nuance to this subject than his Nuenen period would have — the fish's iridescent quality is observed with color sensitivity. The composition is simple and frontal, the fish themselves the entire subject.