Still Life with Plaster Statuette, a Rose and Two Novels

This unusual 1887 Paris still life at the Kröller-Müller Museum combines three objects of very different origin and register — a plaster cast of a classical sculpture, a fresh rose, and two contemporary novels — in a composition that documents Van Gogh's specific Parisian intellectual environment with unusual candour. The plaster cast connects to his academic training at Cormon's; the novels would almost certainly be French naturalist or Symbolist fiction, perhaps Zola or de Maupassant; the rose introduces the fresh natural world he was painting in flower still lifes. This kind of composite arrangement — objects from different domains of life assembled in a single pictorial space — was a relatively rare approach for Van Gogh, who more often focused on a single category of subject. The still life functions as a kind of autobiography of his Paris period: the painter between the academic tradition, the literary world, and the natural beauty he found in both.

Van Gogh's Parisian palette is considerably lighter than his Dutch work, with the rose providing a warm accent against the cooler tones of the statuette and books. Paint is applied in short, varied strokes that explore the different surface qualities of the objects — the smooth plaster, the soft petals, the flat paper of the books. The composition is informal and personal in character.