Paris period
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 When one thinks of the unsaleability of the "modern" pictures before the dealers had built up a market for them with the aid of Zola and other critics, through the tenacity of the artists themselves and the support from Germany and America (where DurandRuel had opened his epoch-making campaign in 1885), one can understand how unreasonable Vincent's impatience must have seemed to the patient younger brother, and why his wife (as she was later to be) says that merely to live with the painter was the greatest proof of Theo's love for him. It triumphed over every difficulty however, and until early in 1888, Vincent had the inestimable advantage of living in Paris during one of its great periods. He drew from it the teaching that was to alter the appearance--though not the substance--of his art, in such a fundamental way. Without anticipating our survey of van Gogh's painting, we may glance at this rich Paris of his time. The young men there, who were his great discovery (for he knew the production of their elders, as he knew the Louvre), were making full use of the freedom that had been won for them, especially by the audacious work of Manet. That master, who had used the past, or a very broad section of it, as a springboard, had launched the younger generation on its study of light and the rendering of that barely known aspect of nature through color. Even the most classical-minded artists of the time, such as Puvis de Chavannes and Degas, felt something of the new intoxication (it was that, for good or for ill). The excitement was increased further by that delight in modern life for which Manet found such powerful confirmation in the art of Daumier and Constantin Guys.
Frequently it was with only the barest of physical necessities that the artists of the 'eighties went on in their swift advance, but the movement of the time sustained them. And so we see Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley go from one brilliant work to another amidst hardships that would have broken the spirit of less heroic men, while the comrades of their earlier years, Renoir and Cézanne, not only continue to produce in the teeth of a hostile world, but go on to new discovery and achievement, that often baffles the small public they had won for themselves.
The first group to profit by their conquest contains men who understand that real homage to preceding masters lies not in following them, but in continuing their work. And so we get Seurat, and Signac who push onward the theories of the Impressionists. It is from these men, more than from the original group, that van Gogh is to learn. At the same time, artists like Gauguin adopted a course that was largely the reverse of Impressionism. Cézanne's famous definition--"Monet is an eye-but what an eye!'--while telling, in the second phrase, of the admiration he felt for his friend's work, is already a criticism of the purely naturalistic phase of Impressionist painting. Gauguin, Emile Bernard and others--to which company van Gogh must soon be added--go beyond the mere organization of the effects of nature, however epic it is made by Cézanne. The lyrical quality in Renoir, deep and classic though it is, meets their needs even less.
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