Van Gogh's Irises
Van Gogh painted irises in the asylum garden in his first days at Saint-Rémy, and again in vases a year later, just before he left.
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About the series
Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in May 1889, in his first week at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It shows a bed of blue irises in the garden, with one white flower among them, and was shown at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris that year. It now belongs to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
In May 1890, shortly before leaving Saint-Rémy, he painted two still lifes of irises in a vase. One sets purple flowers against a yellow ground and is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The other, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was painted against a pink ground that has faded to near white over time. The group was influenced by Japanese prints, with strong outlines and flat areas of colour.
The garden Irises is a wide landscape for a living room. The two vase paintings are upright and work well as a pair.
