Irises

1890

Oil on canvas, 73.7 × 92.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Van Gogh planned this bouquet as a soft harmony: violet irises on a pink ground, tied together by green leaves. Fading has upset that balance.

He painted a second irises canvas as its opposite: violet flowers against a bright lemon yellow.
In a May 1890 letter he set them side by side: the yellow one built on complements that strengthen each other, this one on related greens, pinks and violets.
Both the pink and the violets contained a red pigment that has faded. The flowers now read bluer and the ground near-white, far from the soft effect he described.

The yellow-ground version is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. The Met reunited the four bouquets in 2015 to show what fading had changed.

Concepts