# Outskirts of Paris near Montmartre [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [GOGH, Vincent van]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Watercolour on paper, 395 x 535 mm ## Commentary <a href="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/database/glossary/note02.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=300,height=400'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return false">Catalogue numbers:</a> F 1410, JH 1286. This picture is painted in watercolour, with solid areas of colour and controlled graphic strokes. It depicts Paris seen at the edges. We see Paris across a frontier marked by a path which also represents the meeting of town and country. The 'country' fills almost half the picture, but this enlarged foreground, closest to us, is virtually empty except for a roofless cottage, some quarried stones, and some handcarts. The city, compressed into the middle ground, is dense, inhabited, busy. Factories smoke above and between packed houses and tenements. In the distance we see hills and another large stretch of countryside. The picture demonstrates van Gogh's conquest of the vocabulary of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting and its vision of the harmonious and hierarchical relations of town and country. ## Related artworks - [A Cottage on the Heath and "The Protestant Barn"]() - [A Lane in the Public Garden at Arles]() - [A Meadow in the Mountains: Le Mas de Saint-Paul]() - [A Pair of Leather Clogs]() - [A Pair of Shoes]() - [A Pair of Shoes]() - [A Workman's Meal-Break]() - [Agostina Segatori in the Café du Tambourin]() - [Almond Tree in Blossom]() - [Apricot Trees in Blossom]() - [At Eternity's Gate \("Worn Out"\)]() - [Avenue of Plane Trees near Arles Station]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()