Vase with Peonies

When Van Gogh turned up in Paris in the spring of 1886 to live with his brother Theo, his paintings were still the brown, earthy things he had made in Holland. The city changed that fast. Surrounded by brighter work everywhere, he set out to retrain his own eye, and the cheapest way to practise colour was a bunch of flowers. He painted more than 40 flower pieces that year, peonies and roses and cornflowers, pushing reds against greens to see how they sharpened each other. Peonies flower for only a few weeks in early summer, so a vase like this one had to be caught quickly, before it dropped.