Van Gogh: Irises and Roses
May 12, 2015 to Aug 16, 2015
Official Site
The exuberant bouquets of spring flowers that punctuate Van Gogh’s work in Provence will be reunited in Van Gogh: Irises and Roses at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning May 12, 2015. The exhibition will bring together for the first time the quartet of flower paintings—two of irises, two of roses, in contrasting formats and color schemes—that Van Gogh made on the eve of his departure from the asylum at Saint-Rémy. In them, he sought to impart a “calm, unremitting ardor” to his “last stroke of the brush.” Conceived as a series or ensemble on a par with the Sunflower decoration he painted earlier in Arles, the group includes the Metropolitan Museum’s Irises and Roses and their counterparts: the upright Irises from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the horizontal Roses from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The presentation is timed to accord with the blooming of the flowers that had captivated the artist’s attention, opening 125 years to the week that Van Gogh announced he was working on these “large bouquets” in letters to his brother dated May 11 and 13, 1890. It will offer a revealing look at the signature still lifes in a singular context, inviting reconsideration of his artistic aims and the impact of dispersal and color fading on his intended results.
[Image: Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1890. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Adele R. Levy, 1958.]
Author: Metropolitan Museum of Art
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