With the Montblanc Masters of Art Homage to Vincent van Gogh Limited Edition 8, Montblanc celebrates Vincent van Gogh, one of the most popular painters of the late 19th century. This edition especiallyemphasises his time in in Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise with design details reflecting the breath-taking blue skies and swirling brush style that make “Wheatfield with Crows” so powerful. “Wheatfield with Crows” depicts a deep blue sky contrasting with the bright yellow of a wheatfield dotted with black birds. The jewel-like quality of this sky is captured in the blue lacquer artwork on the solid Au 750 signature gold cap and barrel, which is partly set with brilliant-cut diamonds and enhanced with swirling engravings that echo the sweeping movements of Vincent’s brush over the canvas. The sky imagery continues on the cap top, where a hand-painted field of intense blue lacquer edged with brilliant-cut diamonds frames the Montblanc diamond at the centre in a solid Au 750 signature gold setting. In an homage to Van Gogh’s love of natural landscapes, the cap features an elaborate handcrafted marquetry design inlaid onto solid Au 750 white gold, rhodium-coated and composed of tiny pieces of mother-of-pearl, sycamore, tulip tree, beetle elytra and straw – a nod to Vincent’s golden wheatfields. Sapphires, Paraiba tourmalines and brilliant-cut diamonds set around the marquetry inlay intensify its vividness. His signature, ‘Vincent’, engraved and filled with blue lacquer, adorns the barrel ring below the portrait. Vincent van Gogh created over 200 paintings in southern France, developing a looser, freer style and becoming equally competent with brush and palette knife – which he used to create a chunky, impetuous “impasto” style. His palette knife inspired the rhodium-coated clip, while his sweeping brushwork is immortalised in the blue lacquer of the cap top. Furthermore, his fondness for pipe smoking, to which he referred in many of his self-portraits, is captured in a subtle detail of the clip: the upper part is shaped like a pipe’s bowl and is adorned with a blue sapphire. One of his portraits, “Self Portrait with Straw Hat”, is the inspiration for the engraving on the forepart.The image embossed on the Au 750 solid gold nib immortalises Vincent’s painting “Almond Blossom”. Its Japanese-inspired style can be traced back to a fashionable admiration of Japanese art known at the time as Japonisme. The overall silhouette is shaped like a Japanese woodcutting knife, as a symbol of Van Gogh’s personal fascination with traditional Japanese woodblock prints. Celebrating his ability to find inspiration and transform it into new art, a quote from a letter Vincent wrote to his brother Theo on 25 September, 1888, is hand-engraved on a solid Au 750 signature gold surface depressed into the barrel and cone: …‘le tableau me vient comme dans un rêve.’ (‘The painting comes to me as if in a dream.’).With signature gold and/or signature gold-coating, Montblanc evokes the enlightened shade of yellow gold which has become an appreciated tone for the Maison’s writing instruments.