Vase with Gladioli and China Asters

By the summer of 1886 Van Gogh had been in Paris only a few months, living with his brother Theo, and everything about his painting was changing. He had arrived from Holland, where his colours were the browns and greys of peasant kitchens. In Paris he saw the Impressionists and wanted that brightness for himself. Models cost money he did not have, so he bought cut flowers instead and painted them over and over. This was one of more than 30 such flower still lifes he made in that single summer, exercises as much as pictures. Here he sets red gladioli against green and orange against blue, testing the complementary pairs he had read about in the colour theory of Delacroix, a French painter he revered. He hoped the flowers might sell, and mostly they did not. Two years later that brighter palette went south with him to Arles, where he painted the sunflowers.