L'Italienne

Van Gogh painted L'Italienne — identified as Agostina Segatori, the Italian café owner who ran the Café du Tambourin where Van Gogh had exhibited his Japanese print collection — in Paris in late 1887 or early 1888. Their relationship, likely romantic in nature, ended badly, and the portrait is one of the most carefully composed female images of his Paris period. The sitter's rich yellow-orange dress, her dark features, and the floral background place the work at the intersection of Japanese woodblock influence and Van Gogh's emerging Mediterranean colour sense. He had used the walls of Segatori's café to show paintings, giving him a stake in her goodwill as subject.

The strong yellow of the dress dominates, set against a background of blue and green floral patterning derived from Japanese prints. The face is rendered with considerable refinement relative to many Paris portraits. The compositional directness — frontal, centred — reflects Van Gogh's admiration for the flat assertion of Japanese figure imagery.