IMPORTANT: READ THIS FIRST!

Before pressing ‘Start’, please read this introduction to the audio tour. You may also listen to it if you wish. Simply scroll to the end of the introduction and click on the pictogram to start the audio version. The introduction briefly tells you why Dutch painters came to Montmartre and explains how to use the audio tour.

IntroductionWelcome to the Montmartre tour, which will take you to places where Dutch painters lived and worked in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The best known of these painters is without a doubt Vincent van Gogh. He and other painters came to Paris because this is where it was all happening. This period saw the emergence of new artistic styles like Impressionism, followed by Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism, Expressionism and Fauvism. Dutch painters wanted to be part of the French art world, take lessons from famous French artists, see the work of innovative painters with their own eyes, and show and sell their own work. They showed their work mainly at the annual exhibitions of the Salon de Paris at the Louvre, or during the World’s Fair, which was held in Paris several times in that period. There were also lots of art dealers and galleries in the city who could publicise their names and their work.  At that time Montmartre was still a rustic village, with vineyards and vegetable gardens. Part of the hill was a quarry, and the whitish yellow stone it produced was used to build many of the houses in Paris. Slowly but surely, more and more painters and writers came to the “Butte” of Montmartre. This was partly because accommodation there was much cheaper than in Paris itself. More and more bars, cheap restaurants, cabarets and dance halls were also opening there, as can be seen in their paintings. You will encounter all these things during this audio tour about Vincent van Gogh, other Dutch painters and their French fellow artists.We have collected a range of paintings, photographs and other images to go with each of the sights on the tour.  There were also many Dutch painters who had their studio in the Montparnasse district of Paris. If you would like to know more about them, we recommend the audio tour “Montparnasse: Piet Mondriaan and other Dutch Painters”. Now press 'Start' and enjoy your walk. Your first stop is the square in front of Sacré-Cœur. The audio information will start to play automatically when you approach each stop, as you enter the GPS zone. If the audio does not start, you can either read the information or start the audio manually by tapping the number of the stop on your screen.