Agostina Segatori in the Café du Tambourin

Catalogue numbers: F 370, JH 1208.

The Café du Tambourin in Montmartre was a favourite place of Parisian artists. Van Gogh painted the portrait of the café's owner, Agostina Segatori, who sat for van Gogh a few times. In fact the only nudes he ever painted in oil were of her. Agostina had modelled for Corot, too.

In the present portrait we see her sitting at a table in the Tambourin that resembles the musical instrument that gave the café its name. The setting of this painting was plainly inspired by Degas's Absinthe Drinkers. But in taking his bearings from Degas, van Gogh was not so much out to record the hopeless solitude of one woman seeking solace in alcohol and a cigarette as to practice an Impressionist eye for a hazy, smoky atmosphere. Merging unclearly with the greenish background are a number of Japanese woodcuts on the wall paneling, doubtless from the collection of the van Gogh brothers.