Vincent van Gogh, newly arrived in Antwerp…

Vincent van Gogh, newly arrived in Antwerp from the Netherlands and not yet thirty-three, now has access to better art supplies, the opportunity to draw from nude models, and exposure to the substantial collections of Dutch and Belgian art in the city's museums and galleries, particularly the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens.

Among the exotic goods entering Europe through Antwerp are Japanese woodblock prints, which van Gogh begins to collect.

The revelation of Rubens's mode of direct notation and of his ability to express a mood by a combination of colors proves decisive in the development of van Gogh's style.

All these sources influence him more than the academic principles taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp, where he had enrolled at the beginning of the year, and where he probably paints the humorous Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (1886, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).

His refusal to follow the academy's pedantic dictates leads to disputes, and at the end of February he leaves precipitately for Montmartre, Paris, to join his twenty-eight-year-old brother Theo, now director of the Boussod and Valadon gallery.