Bouquet of gladioli of various colors

Van Gogh had been in Paris since March 1886, living with his brother Theo on Montmartre and trying to get the grey out of his painting. Models cost money he did not have, so he bought flowers instead, and painted more than 30 flower pieces that summer. He told the English painter Horace Livens what he was after: oppositions of blue with orange, red with green, yellow with violet, and the broken tones that could hold those extremes together. Gladioli came in every colour and were cheap, which made them useful. In 1959 a woman he had once worked with offered a Van Gogh to Jean Planque, a Swiss collector then buying for the dealer Ernst Beyeler. He found this tall narrow canvas hanging on a lavatory door in poor condition. It was missing from the standard Van Gogh catalogue, so Planque had it authenticated and bought it back for himself, the only Van Gogh he could ever afford.