The Outskirts of Paris

Van Gogh's 1886 depiction of the outskirts of Paris belongs to his exploration of the city's transitional zones — the suburbs and banlieues where urban density thinned into market gardens, building sites, and residual rural landscape. These peripheral areas fascinated him because they were neither city nor country, neither modern nor traditional, but somewhere between. The outskirts of Paris were changing rapidly in the 1880s as the city expanded, and Van Gogh's paintings of these zones are documents of a landscape in flux. The work is currently in a private collection.

The suburban landscape is rendered with Van Gogh's evolving Paris palette — lighter and more varied than his Dutch period. The transitional character of the outskirts is communicated through the mixture of built and natural elements. His brushwork captures both the specific materials of the suburban environment and the quality of Paris light across it.