Vase with Gladioli and Lilac

Vase with Gladioli and Lilac (1886) is an early Paris period flower painting that demonstrates Van Gogh's admiration for Adolphe Monticelli — the eccentric Marseilles colorist who painted thick-impasto floral arrangements with extraordinary chromatic freedom and who died in 1886, just as Van Gogh arrived in Paris. He described Monticelli repeatedly in letters to Theo as a misunderstood master whose approach to paint application and color intensity had anticipated the direction Van Gogh himself wanted to go, and the Paris flower paintings are in part a homage to Monticelli's method. The gladioli — their tall spikes of successive blooms — and the softer lilac clusters together offered the kind of mixed subject that Monticelli had favored, allowing different parts of the canvas to be treated with different technique. Van Gogh's early Paris technique was transitional: brighter than Nuenen, with a growing interest in impasto and complementary contrast, but not yet at the full intensity of his Arles work. The work's unlocated status is common for the earlier Paris flower paintings, which circulated through dealers before the systematic cataloguing of his Paris period was fully established.

The gladioli's vertical spikes and the lilac's horizontal clusters are treated with distinct brushwork approaches — the former with longer, more decisive marks following the bloom's form, the latter with shorter dabs building the cluster's mass. Van Gogh applies paint thickly in both, creating textural relief that catches light and gives the painting physical presence beyond mere pictorial representation. His Paris palette here is transitional — brighter than Nuenen but not yet at the Arles intensity, reflecting his ongoing absorption of Impressionist color theory.