Bowl with Zinnias

Van Gogh reached Paris at the end of February 1886 and moved in with his brother Theo, who sold pictures for a firm on the boulevard Montmartre. Models cost money he did not have, so through that summer he painted flowers, one bunch after another, as a way of working on colour. He put it plainly to his sister afterwards, that for a year he had painted nothing but flowers to get himself used to colours other than the browns he had brought from the Netherlands. The zinnias are laid on thickly, with the same reds carried into the background, close to what Adolphe Monticelli of Marseille was doing with loaded paint. Theo's gallery handled Monticelli, and the brothers bought several of his canvases for themselves.