Chrysanthemums

In December 1878 this bouquet left Monet's hands for a doctor's house. The buyer was Paul Gachet, a Paris physician who kept a home at Auvers-sur-Oise, north of the city, painted in his spare time and collected the work of artists he knew. He bought the canvas directly from the painter. By 1890 the same man would be watching over Vincent van Gogh in the last weeks of his life at Auvers. The picture itself is a dense bunch of chrysanthemums, white, pink and rust, spilling from a pot wrapped in red, set against a pale background dotted with loose sprays of flowers. The signature sits on the left and the year, 1878, in the opposite corner. It stayed with the family for more than 70 years, until Gachet's son, also named Paul, gave it to the French state in 1951.