Street scene in Montmartre

In March 1886 Vincent van Gogh arrived in Paris and settled in with his brother Theo who was working with the art dealer Goupil soon to become Boussod-Valadon & Cie. Theo lived at 25 rue Laval, later renamed rue Victor Massé, the same street where at number 12 the famous cabaret Le Chat Noir had opened in 1885. In order to encourage his brother's work, Theo left the rue Massé in May 1886 for a larger apartment at 54 rue Lepic. This became Vincent's refuge and the view from the apartment, overlooking Paris from the Butte Montmartre, would inspire many new works. Vincent would stay there until February 1888.

In a letter dated July 10, 1887 addressed to Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek, Theo speaks of this new apartment in the following terms: "I now live with my brother Vincent, who studies painting with tireless assiduity. As he needs a lot of space for his work, we live in a rather large apartment at 54 rue Lepic [...]. What is remarkable about our apartment is that we have a magnificent view of the city, with the hills of Meudon, Saint-Cloud, etc. in the foreground and, above it, almost as much sky as when we are in the dunes. With the different effects generated by the variations in the sky, it's a subject for I don't know how many paintings.”

The Rue Lepic at the time marked an informal boundary between lower and upper Montmartre, between the recently developed urban areas of the Butte and those that had remained semi-rural. During his stay, Vincent was fascinated by the atmosphere, both pastoral and urban, of Montmartre’s maquis, a term then used to designate the unurbanized flanks of the hill, where vegetable gardens and shanties mixed with abandoned quarries and vacant lots. Unlike his contemporaries, such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or Pierre-Auguste Renoir before him, who depicted the Montmartre of cabarets and popular balls, Van Gogh chose to depict the more bucolic and tranquil features of the area which contrasted with the hectic life of the city streets below.

One subject that particularly provoked the painter's interest at the time was that of the mills of Montmartre whose reference to the Dutch tradition must have pleased him. During his stay on La Butte, Van Gogh devoted nearly twenty works to the three principal mills which existed at the time within the enclosure known as the Moulin de la Galette. These buildings, which belonged to the Debray family, had long since ceased to function and had been transformed into places of leisure, mixing guinguettes, ballrooms, cafés and merry-go-rounds, that were very popular with Parisians. From Camille Corot to Paul Signac, via Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, they had been a source of inspiration for artists since the mid-19th century.

In the two years Van Gogh's spends in Paris his representations of the Moulin de la Galette would evolve significantly. In 1886, he first painted the most imposing and famous of mills, known as Blute-Fin, which was equipped with a wooden belvedere that allowed for a breathtaking view of the city below. He also painted the second mill on several occasions, which was at the corner of the rue Girardon, known as Moulin Radet. In all these compositions dating from 1886, the painter still used his so-called “Dutch palette” which consisted mainly of brownish tones and thick impastos.

During the months of February and March 1887, Van Gogh shifts his interest towards the third and smallest of the mills in Montmartre: the Pepper Mill. He represents it in three works painted at the same time: Le Moulin de la Galette (Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute), where it is seen from afar below the hill, and two compositions painted from the Impasse des deux frères: Scène de rue, le moulin à poivre (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum) and the present painting. In these last two compositions, which present very similar points of view, the painter set up his easel in the Impasse des deux frères (now a private street inside the enclosure of the Moulin de la Galette). The resulting paintings are moving testimonies to a Montmartre that has since vanished: the side entrance of the Moulin de la Galette, surmounted by lanterns, the wooden palisades, a carrousel on the left and the Pepper Mill itself which was built around 1865 and destroyed in 1911 with the piercing of the Avenue Junot.

The works from early 1887 reveal a radical evolution in Van Gogh's art. Scène de rue à Montmartre testifies not only to Van Gogh's fascination for a city in full mutation but also to his contacts with the Parisian artistic avant-garde. Indeed, from the moment he arrived in Paris, Van Gogh multiplied his interactions and visits to art exhibitions. Whether at the Académie Cormon, where he enrolled, or at the shop of the color supplier known as Le Père Tanguy, that was at the foot of Montmartre on the rue Clauzel. Van Gogh met and frequented many artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and John Russell. Whether at the shop of the Père Tanguy or at the Boussod-Valadon gallery which his brother directed, he quickly familiarized himself with the art of Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and many others. Above all, in January 1887, just a few weeks before he executed this painting, Van Gogh befriended Paul Signac, who introduced him to the scientific theory of colors, the work of Seurat, and took him to paint with him on numerous occasions in Paris and Asnières.

All these encounters and influences led Van Gogh to abandon the dark tones of his early works and embrace a new more vibrant and colorful palette. His touch becomes lighter, his pigments blended to create effects of transparency and light. Kept for nearly a century in the same family, Scène de rue à Montmartre is a pivotal work in the oeuvre of Van Gogh. It is a testimony to his contact with a new city, Paris the capital of the XIXth Century, but also with the art of the Impressionists and the avant-garde which led him to abandon the dark tones of his early works and develop the unique coloristic palette and style that would consecrate him as one of the greatest masters of Modern Art.