Basket of Hyacinth Bulbs

Painted in Paris in 1887, this modest still life of bulbs in a basket connects Van Gogh's Parisian colour experiments to the botanical curiosity he had maintained since his Nuenen years, when he collected plant specimens with the same systematic attention he gave to art materials. Hyacinth bulbs in winter — dormant, unpromising, holding their colour in reserve — were a deliberate contrast to the vivid flowers he was painting in other still lifes of the same period, and the subject's restraint allowed him to explore a different register of the still-life genre: the unpretentious observation of common things rather than the chromatic performance of full bloom. He was studying Japanese woodblock prints that showed a similar capacity to find beauty in modest plant subjects, and the Dutch tradition of botanical still life that ran from seventeenth-century flower painters to his own contemporaries. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The bulbs' irregular, knobbly forms require Van Gogh to develop a specific brushwork language—short, varied marks that follow surface contours and differentiate the papery outer skin from the heavier interior form. The basket's woven structure provides an opportunity for contrasting directional marks. The palette for bulbs—brown, ochre, and dull purple—is more restrained than his flower subjects but handled with equal attention.