Vase with Zinnias and Geraniums

When Van Gogh reached Paris in 1886 to live with his brother Theo, he saw Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painting for the first time and quickly abandoned the dark browns he had brought from Holland. Flowers were how he taught himself the new brightness. Through that summer he painted vase after vase, using them to practise pushing colours against each other, and this bunch of zinnias and geraniums is one of them. Behind it stands the painter he most admired then, Adolphe Monticelli of Marseille, whose thickly loaded, jewel-like still lifes Van Gogh collected and copied. You can see it in the heavy ridges of paint and the hot reds set against green.