Vincent van Gogh - Roses [1890]

In May 1890, just before his departure from the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted an exceptional group of four still lifes, to which both the Museum's Roses and Irises belong. Striking in their facility of execution and elegant simplicity of design, these bouquets and their counterparts, an upright composition of irises (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and a horizontal composition of roses (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), were conceived as a decorative ensemble, like the suite of sunflowers he had made earlier in Arles. Traces of pink along the tabletop and rose petals in the present painting, which have faded over time, offer a faint reminder of the formerly vivid "canvas of pink roses against a yellow green background in a green vase."

 

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm]

Done