Irises

1889

Oil on canvas, 74.3 × 94.3 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

A bed of blue irises crowds the foreground against a field of orange flowers. He started it during his opening week as a patient at Saint-Rémy.

The view is close and cropped, with flowers spilling past the edges. The museum suggests Japanese woodblock prints shaped this framing and the broad areas of color.
Look for the single white iris at left, set apart from the blue mass.
Dark contour lines edge many of the leaves and petals.
In September 1889 his brother Theo showed it at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.
The critic Octave Mirbeau was the first to own it.

The asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole had a garden where he could paint from nature. He thought of this canvas as a study and made no known drawings for it.

Image: Getty Open Content Program · Public domain