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This bouquet has puzzled the people who study Van Gogh, because he never mentions it in a single letter, and he wrote about almost everything he painted. The clue is in the paint itself: the short, brick-shaped strokes and the hot blues and ochres match the landscapes he was making at Auvers-sur-Oise in the last summer of his life, in 1890. He had left the asylum at Saint-Remy in May and settled in that village north of Paris under a doctor's care, painting at a furious pace. In July he shot himself and died at 37. So these crowded, cut flowers were set down within weeks of the end, in the same restless, hurried touch as the wheatfields of those final days.