View of Paris

Van Gogh painted multiple views of Paris from the heights of Montmartre during his residence there in 1886–88, and this 1886 panorama at the Van Gogh Museum represents one of his earliest engagements with the city as a subject. Living with Theo at 54 rue Lepic, he had a daily view across the rooftops toward the southern horizon, and the act of painting the city from above connected him to a long tradition of urban panorama painting while situating him very specifically within the bohemian geography of Montmartre. The city he was painting was the most artistically charged in the world at that moment: Seurat had just completed the Grande Jatte, Monet was preparing his first major series, and the Impressionist exhibitions had transformed the European art world. Van Gogh arrived as a provincial painter from the Dutch provinces and left two years later as one of the movement's most radical practitioners.

The panoramic cityscape is handled with a palette noticeably lighter and more chromatic than his Dutch townscapes, demonstrating how rapidly Parisian painting was transforming his color sense. The buildings and streets are suggested through summary strokes rather than the careful structural description he applied to Dutch architectural subjects.