Van Gogh liked to explore the outskirts of Paris, searching for pastoral settings in parks and the wooded areas of the suburbs.

[1] Like many Impressionsits,[2] Van Gogh was concerned about the way in which the landscape and way of life were affected by technical progress and industrialization.

Speaking for myself, in certain spots I do not look without a little sadness on a new red-tiled tavern, remembering a loam cottage with a moss-covered thatched roof that used to be there.

Paul van der Griip, author of "Art and Exoticism: An Anthropology of the Yearning for Authenticity", wrote of Van Gogh's intention to portray his message of concern, "In his representations of the city he mainly paid attention to the expanding outskirts which swallowed up the countryside, whereby city and country life were often juxtaposed, sometimes in the form of trains for factories blotting the countryside.

"[4] Of Van Gogh's painting Outskirts of Paris (F264), Schwartz and Przyblyski write that although Van Gogh provides dots of color in a bleak terrain, "The factories - for that is what those lumpish buildings are - will replace the windmill, and the villas will march across the mud and cornfields until they reach the premonitory gas standard.