Flowers

Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Flowering trees were special to van Gogh. They represented awakening and hope. He enjoyed them aesthetically and found joy in painting flowering trees

Irises is one of several paintings of irises by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, and one of a series of paintings he made at the Saint Paulde-Mausole asylum in SaintRémy-de-Provence, France, in the last year before his death in 1890. Van Gogh started painting Irises within a week of entering the asylum, in May 1889, working from nature in the hospital garden. He considered this painting a study which is probably why there are no known drawings for it, although Theo, Van Gogh’s brother, thought better of it and quickly submitted it to the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in September 1889, together with Starry Night Over the Rhone. He wrote to Vincent of the exhibition: “[It] strikes the eye from afar. The Irises are a beautiful study full of air and life.” The painting is one of his most renowned works

Almond Blossoms is from a group of several paintings made in 1888 and 1890 by Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Saint-Rémy, southern France of blossoming almond trees. The works reflect the influence of Impressionism, Divisionism, and Japanese woodcuts. Almond Blossom was made to celebrate the birth of his nephew and namesake, son of his brother Theo and sisterin-law Jo. The composition is unlike any other of van Gogh’s paintings. The branches of the almond tree seem to float against the blue sky and fill the picture plane. The closeup of the branches brings to mind Delacroix’s proposition that “even a part of a thing is kind of a complete entity in itself.”Dark lines outline the branches. This is a feature that Van Gogh had admired in Japanese floral studies that, for example, may depict a portion of a stalk of bamboo in an empty space.