Artwork story
About Irises
The artist and artwork
Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in May 1890, near the end of his year at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. The oil-on-canvas still life belongs to a group of four ambitious spring bouquets, two of irises and two of roses, through which he explored contrasting color schemes. The vase and flowers are immediately recognizable, yet the energized contours and densely worked surface make the arrangement feel less like a specimen on a table than a living field of color.
The world around it
European cities in 1890 were being transformed by industry, electric light, photography, mass print culture, and new synthetic materials, including artists’ pigments. In painting, Van Gogh and other Post-Impressionists were moving beyond naturalistic description toward color and brushwork used for emotional and structural effect. Irises emerged from that modern experiment, but also from a period of confinement and transition in the artist’s life: shortly after finishing the series, Van Gogh left Saint-Rémy for Auvers-sur-Oise.
A detail to notice
The colors we see are not exactly the colors Van Gogh intended. He described the flowers as violet against a pink background and sought a harmonious, soft effect, but unstable red pigments faded over time. The background shifted toward white and the flowers toward blue. That change makes the painting a record of two histories at once: Van Gogh’s original color idea and the physical aging of the materials he chose.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on canvas and held in the European Paintings department.
Recorded dimensions include 29 x 36 1/4 in. (73.7 x 92.1 cm).
Subject terms include Flowers and Still Life. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Gift of Adele R. Levy, 1958.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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