Still-Life: Vase with Irises against a Yellow Background

Catalogue numbers: F 678, JH 1977.

In his last weeks at Saint-Rémy before he moved north again, van Gogh painted a series of still-lifes. The size and scale of these recall the monumental paintings of sunflowers of the summer of 1888, but the disciplined use of complementary colours also establishes a link with the experiments in colour and in flower painting which absorbed him in his first year in Paris, 1886. In Saint-Rémy he painted pink roses against a green ground, and here, violet irises against a yellow field. The painting betrays a renewed liveliness and intensity of colour. Instead of toning down the contrasts in order to harmonize the different parts of the painting, as he sometimes did, van Gogh has tried here, as he had done in Paris, to sharpen and heighten them. Van Gogh has painted these flowers on what was his preferred size of canvas in late 1888-90. The regular use of the same size of canvas meant that if and when his paintings were exhibited they would work together as a series.