Vase of Flowers

Van Gogh painted these flowers in June 1890, in the last weeks of his life, at the house of Doctor Paul Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise, the village north of Paris where he spent his final summer. Gachet was the doctor meant to keep an eye on him, and Van Gogh warmed to him quickly, calling him something like a new brother. The vase in the picture stands on Gachet's own red table, the same table that fills the lower part of the canvas with a slab of warm colour. You can see how fast he worked. The blooms are only just readable, blocked in with quick strokes and ringed by rough blue outlines. He died about six weeks later, on the 29th of July.