Red Cactus Dahlias

The cactus dahlia was still a new flower when these were painted in 1892. In 1872 a Dutch grower near Utrecht opened a shipment of tubers from Mexico and found it rotten, except for one small piece of root. When that bloomed the next year its petals were deep crimson, long and narrow and curling backwards, a shape growers had not seen before. It was named after Benito Juárez, the Mexican president who had died in 1872, and breeders raised a whole class of spiky varieties from it. In those years Caillebotte lived on the Seine at Petit-Gennevilliers and spent much of his time gardening. Here three red heads fill the canvas against dark leaves, with no vase, ground or sky. The painting is privately owned and was lent in 2016 to the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny for an exhibition on him as a gardener.