Lilac Bush

Catalogue numbers: F 579, JH 1692.

This painting was made in the garden of St. Paul Hospital in Saint-Rémy, where van Gogh was being treated for mental illness. The Impressionistic brushstrokes and Japanese style accentuated outline of the iris leaves become, in combination with the broken tortuous line and intense colour, an expression of the artist's inner fire yearning to be outside the walls of the institution.