Another frequently cited reason for the shift in Van Gogh’s color palette was his move to Paris in 1886. It is generally assumed that he was inspired by the bold use of color by the French Impressionists.

We were not convinced by the medical reasoning behind the shift in Van Gogh’s color palette and we could not think of any French Impressionists that painted with colors nearly as bold as Van Gogh, so we decided to take a look at some other possibilities.

Did Van Gogh Use More Yellow Because He Moved to a Sunnier Climate?

Van Gogh was a restless soul and moved around quite a bit. He also spent a lot of time painting outdoors, especially in his later years. As someone who famously struggled with mood swings, we thought location, and more importantly, weather patterns may have impacted his use of color.

To test this, we created composite images averaging every painting Van Gogh created from each of the major locations he worked from and compared them to weather patterns from those regions. We think the results are quite remarkable.