III.

Paris

In 1886 van Gogh went to live with Théo in Paris, where he became familiar with the new art movements developing at the time. Théo’s gallery was attempting to sell works by impressionist painters such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro (see Impressionism), and van Gogh saw for the first time the brighter colors and less sentimental subject matter of impressionist painting. As a result he began to abandon the dark colors of his early works for a much lighter and brighter palette.

In Paris van Gogh also came to know many of the younger artists, among them Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Émile Bernard, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat. Through these painters he learned to admire the work of Japanese printmakers such as Hiroshige and Hokusai. The linear patterns and flat areas of color in Japanese prints had a profound effect on his style. Under the influence of the French painters, van Gogh began to experiment with current techniques, especially with Seurat’s pointillist technique, which used many tiny dots of different colors to model forms in paint. This influence can be seen in van Gogh’s portrait of Père Tanguy (1887-1888, Musée Rodin, Paris) and in a series of self-portraits in which he used short strokes of bright colors to model the human form.