Irises

The Irises painted at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in May 1889 — shortly after Van Gogh's arrival at the asylum — were shown at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris the following September, where the critic Octave Mirbeau described them as conveying 'terrible anguish of humanity transmuted into art.' Van Gogh himself described his motivation more simply: the irises were growing in the asylum garden and he needed to paint. The Metropolitan Museum's version, dated to 1890, belongs to the Auvers period when Van Gogh returned to the iris subject with a somewhat different palette and handling than the famous Getty version. The iris series as a whole documents his sustained use of close-up floral observation as both a technical exercise and a form of meditative engagement with the immediate natural world during periods of emotional difficulty.

Van Gogh's brushwork is intensely physical — thick impasto applied in swirling, directional strokes that give the iris blossoms and leaves a writhing, energetic presence. His palette in the 1890 Auvers version shifts slightly from the intense blue-violet of the 1889 Saint-Rémy canvas, with more varied greens in the foliage and a different treatment of the background, demonstrating his continued experimentation with the subject even in the final weeks of his life.