Boulevard de Clichy — Vincent van Gogh, 1887

Painted in early 1887 during Van Gogh's Paris years, Boulevard de Clichy looks down the Montmartre artery he and his brother Theo walked daily. The scene has that grey-blue light particular to Paris in winter — pedestrians moving under bare-armed trees along the wide boulevard. This is Van Gogh at his most urban, recording a world that Montmartre friends like Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas would have known well. The postcard carries that grey-blue Paris atmosphere into a hand-held format — for a city greeting, a desk-side frame, or a Van Gogh collection that travels. From the Vincent van Gogh collection.