Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh painted the surviving Montmartre windmills repeatedly through 1886, from ground a few minutes uphill of his apartment on the rue Lepic.
Moulin de la Galette
Standing, much changed
In, as a customer
A successor, same room
The last working windmills on the butte, turned into an open-air dance hall — painted by Renoir in 1876 and by Van Gogh repeatedly in 1886, a few minutes up the hill from his flat.
- 83 rue Lepic, 75018 Paris
- Open-air dance hall through the later nineteenth century
The place, briefly
Montmartre once had dozens of windmills grinding grain for Paris. Two survive: the Blute-Fin and the Radet, which together became the establishment known as the Moulin de la Galette — a mill that sold a little flat cake, the galette, and then a guinguette with an open-air floor where people danced on Sunday afternoons.
Renoir painted the dancing in 1876 in the picture now at the Musée d'Orsay, all dappled light and pleasure. Ten years later Vincent van Gogh painted the same site and got something entirely different out of it: the bare structure of the mill against the sky, the fences, the scrubby ground, a working hill rather than a party. He lived a few minutes down the slope at 54 rue Lepic and returned to the motif again and again through 1886.
The two treatments a decade apart are a useful measure of what Montmartre was: simultaneously a pleasure ground and a poor semi-rural village, depending on which painter you asked and which afternoon you came.
A restaurant operates on the site today. The windmills are protected structures and are not open.
Key facts
- The Blute-Fin and the Radet — the last on the hill
- An open-air dance hall and guinguette
- Painted the dancing in 1876; the canvas is at the Musée d'Orsay
- Painted the mill repeatedly in 1886, from a few minutes down the hill
- A restaurant trades on the site; the mills themselves are closed
Timeline
Renoir paints the Sunday dancing at the Moulin de la Galette.
Van Gogh paints the windmill repeatedly from the surrounding ground.
On the map
Questions before you go
Are the Montmartre windmills real?
Yes. Two survive of the many that once ground grain on the hill — the Blute-Fin and the Radet. Both are protected and neither is open to visitors.
Did Van Gogh paint the Moulin de la Galette?
Repeatedly, through 1886. He lived a few minutes downhill on the rue Lepic and treated the mill as a working structure rather than a pleasure ground.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
98 Rue Lepic
The Montmartre flat Louis-Ferdinand Céline kept for twelve years, and the desk behind both of his novels — Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan were written at this address.
Visit the place
4 Rue Girardon
Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Montmartre apartment during the Occupation — where Gen Paul came up from his studio a few doors away, and where the manuscripts later famous as 'the lost trove' were left behind in June 1944.
Visit the placeStudio 28
A small Montmartre cinema, opened in 1928 and still running. It gave Un Chien andalou an eight-month run from October 1929, and in December 1930 its screening of Buñuel and Dalí's L'Âge d'or ended with far-right groups attacking the auditorium and slashing the paintings hanging in the foyer.
Visit the place54 rue Lepic
The Montmartre flat Vincent van Gogh shared with his brother Theo from June 1886 until he left for Arles in February 1888 — the address where his palette turned from Dutch brown to the colour everyone now knows him for.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.