Still Life (Nature morte)

Vincent van Gogh

Oil on canvas

Barnes Foundation

Painted in May 1888 during van Gogh's highly productive period in Arles in the south of France, this oil on canvas depicts a bouquet of wildflowers arranged in a blue majolica vase with painted decoration, accompanied by a white teacup — objects that recur across several still lifes from this period. Van Gogh approached his still lifes as deliberate color studies, arranging flowers against saturated fields of color to experiment with bold chromatic relationships. As a Post-Impressionist master, he employed vigorous, expressive brushwork and vivid, unnaturalistic color to transform the modest genre of still life into an arena of intense pictorial energy. The painting is now held in the permanent collection of The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.