La Mousmé

In the pictureA girl seated at an angle in a round-backed chair turns only her face to look out at us. Her black hair, parted in the middle, is tied back with a red ribbon. Her jacket has red and blue vertical stripes with a single row of orange buttons down the front, and white collar and cuffs. Her blue skirt below is densely scattered with orange polka dots. In the hand resting on her lap she holds a sprig of oleander with pinkish flowers. The background, a plain pale mint color, fills much of the top and right of the picture, and the dark brown arms of the chair curve on either side.

BackgroundVan Gogh painted it in Arles in the south of France in the summer of 1888. He was drawn to the vivid complementary colors and contrasting patterns of the Japanese woodblock prints he collected, and tried to find his imagined Japan in the bright light of the south. The title word mousmé comes from a French novel set in Japan by Pierre Loti, where it means an innocent young girl. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh is known to have described the model as a girl of about twelve to fourteen. Chester Dale bought it in 1929, and it entered the National Gallery of Art in Washington through his bequest in 1963.

Puzzle tipEach area has its own color and pattern, so sorting is easy, but the background is large. Fitting the face, the red ribbon and the row of buttons down the middle of the jacket first creates a vertical center line. The jacket's red and blue stripes, the orange dots of the skirt and the oleander flowers on her lap have clear patterns and come next. The mint background left at the end is nearly one color, so first slot in the pieces crossed by the brown curves of the chair arms, then fill the rest from the top edge. 100 pieces is a good fit.