Portrait of Père Tanguy

Catalogue numbers: F 364, JH 1352.

Influenced by Signac, whom he met around 1887, van Gogh devoted the whole year to a series of experimental variations on the dot or dash brushstroke, the aim of which was not so much optical blending as the structuring of space. The paintings of late 1887, such as Portrait of Père Tanguy, in which a newly acquired maturity begins to assert itself, retain traces of this experimental Neo-Impressionist practice in the stark contrast between the network of touches of pure colour and the backgrounds against which they are applied.