Le Moulin de Blute-Fin, 1886 by Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh arrived in Paris in 1886 to find a city rapidly evolving. The Industrial Revolution had led to a surge in commerce with manufacturing businesses taking off. There was great demand within the workforce for unskilled manual workers and for the white-collared skilled workers who were becoming a part of the swelling middle classe. Both the middle and the working classes were going through a period of intense expansion, and alongside this growth in numbers, there was a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, Paris was expanding, and Montmartre, which was at one time a small hill village, had become a suburb of the city, Montmartre was a center of artistic activity, and it was here that Van Gogh moved to with his brother Theo, Originally the area had 13 windmills, but by the time Van Gogh had arrived none of them were functional, Le Moulin de Blute-Fin and Le Moulin de la Galette are the only two to remain, and together form Le Moulin de la Galette, which was turned into a fashionable ballroom and cabaret in 1870.