Still Life: Bottle, Lemons and Oranges

By May 1888 Van Gogh had settled in Arles and turned almost scientific about colour. He wanted to know what happened when he set opposites side by side, and here he tests it plainly: yellow and orange fruit heaped in a shallow basket against a flat blue-green ground. A tall dark bottle stands behind them. He was reading and writing constantly about how one colour makes its opposite ring louder, and a bowl of citrus was a cheap, patient subject to try it on. That same summer the idea would carry into the sunflowers he painted to brighten his yellow house. The whole thing is built from two or three colours pushed as far as they would go.