Grapes

Grapes (1887), at the Van Gogh Museum, belongs to the series of fruit and vegetable still lifes Van Gogh produced during his Paris period as exercises in colour theory and Impressionist technique. The grape cluster, with its dark, cool tones against lighter backgrounds, gave him an opportunity to explore the colour relationships between deep purples, blues, and the complementary yellows and ochres of surrounding surfaces. During this period he was systematically working through problems of complementary colour contrast derived from his study of Delacroix's writings and his conversations with Signac and the Neo-Impressionists.

The grapes' dark, clustered forms are rendered with individual marks that build up each fruit's rounded surface while creating the dense mass of the bunch as a whole. Van Gogh likely uses cool blue-purples for the grapes set against warmer ground tones, exploiting the complementary contrast to intensify both colours. The handling shows the systematic application of colour theory in a contained still-life format.