Flowerpot with Garlic Chives

This modest 1887 Paris still life of garlic chives growing in a flowerpot connects Van Gogh's Parisian colour experiments to the humble kitchen-garden subjects he had painted in Nuenen — a deliberate continuity that he maintained throughout his stylistic transformation. Garlic chives were a working-class herb grown in the small allotments he could observe from his Montmartre window, and their modest, functional status was part of their appeal: he distrusted subjects chosen for their prettiness and was drawn to plants and objects that spoke of actual use and ordinary life. The vigorous upward thrust of the chive leaves also offered a compositional challenge — how to render strong vertical growth with the directional brushwork he was developing — that he treated with the same seriousness he would give a more conventionally beautiful subject. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds this alongside his other Paris still lifes of utilitarian subjects.

The upward thrust of the chive leaves gives the composition strong vertical energy that Van Gogh's directional brushstrokes reinforce. He treats the plant with the same intense scrutiny he would give to flowers—each blade of grass rendered as an expressive mark rather than a generic botanical notation. The pot is likely painted with broader, more structural strokes, grounding the energetic growth above.