Vincent believed very much in the emotional significance of colors: writing about the painting Night café (1888): "I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green [. . .]. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens in the figures of the sleeping hooligans, in the empty, dreary room, in violet and blue."⁴ Also in Vincent’s early work, color had a symbolic significance, such as in his portraits of farmers: "I have painted them in the color of a potato (obviously with the peels still on) covered with earth. In doing so, I realize that the same has been said about the farmers painted by Millet: ‘his farmers look as if they have been painted in the soil they plant’."⁵ In 1885 he even took piano lessons in order to learn about the nuances of color-tones, to compare the notes of the piano with colors.

Vincent acknowledged the problem of matching the colors of his subjects with the pigments available to him: "Mightn’t I presume that a painter had better start from the colors on his palette than from the colors in nature?"⁶ His reading of Blanc’s Grammaire des arts du dessin (1867) and his encounter with impressionism in Paris in 1886 stimulated him to re-organize his color-composition. The principle of complementarity considers that colors are victorious allies when juxtaposed in a pure state but deadly enemies when mixed. The first signs of these ideas are apparent in Vegetable gardens in Montmartre (1887).

Vincent’s use of color was also deeply influenced by the Japanese Ukyio-e woodcuts: the monochrome surfaces and compositions highlighting this two-dimensional quality are discernible in his work. He idealized the Japanese community spirit and repeatedly described his stay in Arles as the situation that brought him closest to Japan. There he also tried to realize his utopia of an artist’s colony. In Arles he used powerful, highly expressive colors that reflected his faith in "a new world confident of a grandiose resurrection of art."⁷ After the failure of his collaboration with Gauguin, however, his optimism faded: "Though I perceive a new form of painting in the distance, I am unable to realize it."⁸