Glass with Hellebores

When Van Gogh painted these hellebores in a glass, he had only just arrived in Paris. In March 1886 he moved in with his brother Theo, an art dealer, in an apartment up in Montmartre, leaving behind the dark browns and greys of his Dutch years, the palette of peasants and lamplit meals. Paris was full of colour he had mostly read about, the Impressionists and their bright, broken brushwork. Short of money for models, he turned to cut flowers, buying cheap bunches and painting them as exercises to lighten his hand. He made more than forty such flower still lifes that year alone. Hellebores are a winter bloom, the so-called Christmas rose, modest beside the roses and gladioli he also set down. This one is small, about the size of a sheet of paper. It was a private study in colour, and private it stayed, never entering a public museum and still in private hands today.