The Factory

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

In the late nineteenth century, the French landscape was becoming increasingly marked by signs of industry. Van Gogh depicts a glass factory in Asnières, a suburb northwest of Paris where the artist painted frequently in the summer of 1887. The round objects stacked along the sides of the pathway are balls of glass awaiting melting inside the buildings. They would have been formed into lantern globes for gas streetlights and interior fixtures.

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