Vase with Flowers Coffeepot and Fruit

Vincent van Gogh

Contemporary-Art.org
Keywords: VaseFlowersCoffeepotFruit

Work Overview

Vase with Flowers, Coffeepot and Fruit
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1887; Paris, France *
Style: Post-Impressionism
Genre: still life
Media: oil, canvas
Location: Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany


To help him choose colors for his studies, Van Gogh collected strands of different shades of yarn to experiment with color combinations. He rolled selected strands together into balls in combinations matching specific paintings, such as the yellow and ocher combinations found in Still Life with Quince Pears and Lemons (F383). The box and his sample balls of yarn have survived and are held by the Van Gogh Museum.


Soon after Van Gogh arrived in Paris he began painting still lifes with the goal of experimenting with contrasting colors. He wrote to a friend in England that his goal was to create "intense coloration, not gray harmony."[28]


His started with still lifes of flowers. At first his still lifes maintained the subdued tones that he used in the Netherlands. The more he became immersed in his painting, he continually added brighter colors to his work until he was using colors directly from the tube. Then he moved on to other subjects from everyday life that reflect his use of vivid colors and a free brushstroke.[29]


Van Gogh courted Agostina Segatori, the owner of the Café du Tambourin on the boulevard de Clichy, for a period of time and gave her paintings of flowers, "which would last for ever".[30]


The energy that Van Gogh put into his Still Life paintings is representative of his habit for "working systematically, concentrating on a theme until he had exhausted it."