Le Moulin de la Gallette

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Le Moulin de la Gallette: Vincent van Gogh

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - Le Moulin de la Gallette

Keywords: Moulin, Gallette

Work Overview: Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year 1886
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 46 cm × 38 cm (18 in × 15 in)
Location Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Le Moulin de la Galette is the title of several paintings made by Vincent van Gogh in 1886 of a windmill, the Moulin de la Galette, which was near Van Gogh and his brother Theo's apartment in Montmartre. The owners of the windmill maximized the view on the butte overlooking Paris, creating a terrace for viewing and a dance hall for entertainment.

The windmill paintings are a subset of paintings from Van Gogh's Montmartre series.

In 1886 van Gogh left the Netherlands for Paris and the guidance of his brother Theo van Gogh. While van Gogh had been influenced by great Dutch masters, coming to Paris meant that he would have the opportunity to be influenced by Impressionists, Symbolists, Pointillists, and Japanese art. His circle of friends included Émile Bernard, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others.[1]

Montmartre, a butte overlooking Paris, was known for its bars, cafes, and dance-hall. It was also located on the edge of countryside that afforded van Gogh the opportunity to work on paintings of rural settings while living in Paris.[2]

The landscape and windmills around Montmartre were the source of inspiration for a number of van Gogh's paintings. Moulin de la Galette, the windmill still mounted over the moved establishment, is located near the apartment that van Gogh shared with his brother Theo from 1886 until 1888. Built in 1622, it was originally called Blute-Fin and belonged to the Debray family in the 19th century. Van Gogh met artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Signac and Paul Gauguin who inspired him to incorporate Impressionism into his artwork. Among other things, this resulted in lighter, more colorful works of art.[3]

Moulin de la Galette was also the name of an outdoor dance hall that was located between two of the last windmills on a Montmartre hilltop. In addition to van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir also painted Moulin de la Galette.[4] Renoir's painting of the dance hall is titled Bal du moulin de la Galette.

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In this small scene of Montmartre in Paris, the bright palette dominated by vibrant blues and greens may reflect Van Gogh’s exposure to contemporary trends toward bold color. He referenced Impressionist plein-air practice by including the small figure of a painter with an easel near the fence at center left. The painting’s brightness stands in great contrast to the dark palette that dominated Van Gogh’s painting before his move to Paris in 1886. The fresh palette echoes the delicate and feathery yet still visible and carefully controlled, brushstrokes with which the transparent-looking paint was applied. Details such as blades of grass, small foliage, the rickety fence, buildings, and gardens at the top of the hill are rendered with fine, spidery lines. Toward the bottom of the composition, blades of grass and yellow flowers are rendered in a notably larger scale, with thicker brushstrokes, to convey their proximity to the viewer. The verticality of the composition enhances the slope of the hill, while the large windmill, the Moulin de Blute-Fin, draws the viewer’s eye to the upper-center-right. A second, smaller windmill, the Moulin à Poivre, is seen to the left. In June 1886, Vincent and Theo moved to an apartment at 54, rue Lepic, which overlooked the three windmills of Montmartre. The windmills were no longer functioning by then, and instead the area had been turned into a popular social hub, the famed Moulin de La Galette. But Van Gogh focused on the topographical view of the structures and gardens, the color of the sky, and the nuances of the grassy hill rather than the social bustle. Carnegie Museum of Art’s canvas is closely related to a painting titled The Moulin de Blute-Fin made in the summer of 1886 (Culture & Sport Glasgow), although the brushwork in the Glasgow canvas is more pronounced. The carefully controlled brushwork and details seen in Carnegie Museum of Art’s painting have led some scholars to speculate that it was finished in the studio.

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