Vase with Carnations and Zinnias

Van Gogh came to Paris in the spring of 1886 to live with his brother Theo, and for the first time stood in front of the bright canvases of the Impressionists. His own work up to then had been dark and heavy, the browns of Dutch peasants and lamplight. Flowers became his way out of that. Through the summer he bought cheap bunches and painted them over and over, using the bouquets mainly to school his eye, setting blue against orange and red against green to see how opposing tones make each other burn brighter. He told a friend in a letter that these were studies in colour before they were anything else. What you are really looking at is that experiment: carnations and zinnias chosen less for themselves than for the argument between their colours.