Still Life with Two Herrings, a Cloth and a Glass

Painted in Paris in 1886, this still life of two herrings with a cloth and a glass is a characteristically modest subject that Van Gogh treated as a color and composition exercise during his transformative Parisian years. Chardin had elevated kitchen objects to the status of high art in the 18th century, and Van Gogh was working in that tradition while absorbing the new lessons of Impressionist color. The herrings — plain, working-class food — reflect his continued identification with modest, everyday life even as his technique was undergoing a radical lightening and brightening.

Van Gogh arranges the two fish diagonally across the canvas with the cloth and glass providing compositional support. The silvery-blue skin of the herrings is rendered with careful attention to their reflective surface quality. The palette is lighter than his Dutch work, with greater attention to the interplay of reflected light and surface texture.