Still Life: Bottle, Lemons and Oranges

Van Gogh's still life of a bottle with lemons and oranges, painted at Arles in 1888, belongs to his exploration of complementary color relationships in the south. The citrus fruit — lemons pale yellow, oranges vivid — against a bottle and neutral ground gave him material for a color study in the yellow-orange range that absorbed him throughout the Arles period. Van Gogh had been reading Delacroix's theories of color and studying the work of the Impressionists, and these still lifes were practical investigations of what complementary contrast could achieve in pure painting terms. The Kröller-Müller holds this as a characteristic Arles still life.

The composition arranges the bottle and citrus fruit with deliberate attention to their chromatic relationships — the yellows and oranges contrasting against the cooler tones of the bottle and background. Van Gogh's brushwork is expressive and direct, each fruit rendered as a distinct form. The palette is high-keyed and warm throughout.