Fritillaries in a Copper Vase

Van Gogh's Fritillaries in a Copper Vase, painted in Paris in 1887, belongs to a pivotal sequence of flower studies he produced after immersion in Japanese woodblock prints. Hiroshige's flat, vibrant botanical compositions directly influenced his approach to floral arrangement, and he began treating flowers as opportunities for pure colour experimentation rather than Baroque still-life convention. Fritillaries — drooping, spotted bell-flowers — gave him unusual pendant forms to work against the vertical axis of the copper vase. The painting hangs in the Musée d'Orsay and represents his Paris period's most refined synthesis of Impressionist touch and Japanese spatial principles.

Dense stippled brushwork in the manner of Signac and Pissarro, whom Van Gogh had met in Paris, enlivens the background. The copper vase is modelled with short curved strokes catching reflected colour. The fritillaries themselves are rendered with exceptional lightness against the pale ground.