Mills and vegetable gardens

Vincent van Gogh painted this scene of windmills and vegetable gardens during his time in Montmartre, a hill on the outskirts of Paris that still retained its rural character in the 1880s. The area was dotted with old windmills, wooden fences, and small garden plots where locals grew vegetables. Van Gogh was drawn to these humble, working-class neighborhoods, finding beauty in their simple, everyday scenes rather than the grand boulevards of central Paris.

The painting shows Van Gogh's style in transition. You can see him experimenting with the lighter palette and looser brushwork he learned from the Impressionists after moving to Paris, but the scene still has that solid, structured quality of his earlier Dutch work. The pale blue structures and fences create a patchwork of enclosures, while the sandy path draws your eye through the composition toward the windmills in the distance. It's a quiet moment capturing a part of Paris that was already disappearing, as the city expanded and these rural pockets gave way to urban development.