Vase aux coquelicots rouges

When Van Gogh painted these poppies in the summer of 1886, he had just arrived in Paris to live with his brother Theo, and his art was changing fast. The dark, earthy pictures he had made in the Netherlands were behind him. In Paris he saw the Impressionists' work up close and began pushing color to the front. Flowers were cheap, patient models, so through that summer he painted vase after vase, using them to test brighter pigments and bolder strokes. Here the reds of the poppies flare against a plain dark ground, the stems and leaves jabbed in with quick green marks. It is one of dozens of such flower studies he made that summer, cheap practice in the brighter palette he had found in Paris.