THE NETHERLANDS Van Gogh Museum P.O. Box 75366, 1070 AJ Amsterdam Info: 020-570 52 52 Tel: 020-570 52 00 Fax: 020-673 50 53 E-mail: info@vangoghmuseum.nl http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl VINCENT VAN GOGH AND THE FRENCH STILL LIFE 16 May 2008 - 4 January 2009 Painting still lifes is the beginning of everything, Vincent van Gogh believed. Starting with his very first painting in 1881, he used still lifes to practice artistic skills, such as the use of colour and the handling of paint. In 1886, when he went to Paris, the centre of the art world, for further study and discovered the colourful works of his French contemporaries, he felt compelled to rethink his own old-fashioned style of painting and approach to colour.