Veduta di Arles con iris in primo piano

Van Gogh had come south to Arles early in 1888, chasing a stronger light than the grey north gave him, and this is one of the first things he found worth painting. A ditch of wild purple irises runs across the front, a field of buttercups behind, and the little town with its church tower sits low on the horizon. He set up outdoors and worked fast, letting the blue-violet flowers argue with the yellow field behind them. It was one canvas among many that spring, when the orchards and fields around Arles came into bloom at once and he painted dozens of them in a few weeks.