Small Delft vase with flowers

On 20 May 1890, his first day in Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh called on Doctor Paul Gachet, the physician who was to look after him there. The same day he wrote to his brother Theo about the pictures he had seen in the house, and among them were two fine bouquets by Cézanne. This is one of them. Cézanne had painted it 17 years earlier, in 1873, while he was living in the same village, and Gachet bought it from him. It is small, about 41 centimetres tall. Red geraniums crowd the top of a little blue-and-white Delft vase, paler flowers rise behind them against a dark cloth, and two fallen red petals lie on the table. It stayed there until the doctor died in 1909, and his son gave it to the national museums in 1951.