About a fifth of Vincent Van Gogh’s 800 or so paintings are still lifes. The first exhibition to focus exclusively on these works shows them to be both a means of experiment for the artist—studies that allowed flights of color and light—and a measure of outside influences, such as Impressionism and Japanese woodcuts. Van Gogh’s 10-year evolution as an artist, cut short by his premature death at 37, is alive within his still lifes, 20 of which are in this show. —J.V.