Vase with Red and White Flowers

This 1886 Paris still life of flowers in a vase belongs to the period when Van Gogh was discovering Impressionism and the Japanese print collection that would transform his color sense. Flower paintings were a staple of academic art, but Van Gogh approached them with the same intensity he brought to everything — as studies in pure color and expressive form. The red and white flowers against a dark ground represent an early experiment in chromatic contrast that anticipates his Arles and Auvers still lifes. The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen canvas shows him moving away from the dark tonalities of his Dutch period toward Paris brightness.

The flowers are painted against a relatively dark ground — still showing traces of his Dutch palette — but the blooms themselves glow with saturated reds and whites. Brushwork is more fluid and varied than his Nuenen work, with strokes beginning to take on the directional expressiveness of his mature style.