Vase with Zinnias and Geraniums

Vincent van Gogh

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Keywords: VaseZinniasGeraniums

Work Overview

Vase with Zinnias and Geraniums
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1886
Style: Post-Impressionism
Genre: flower painting
Media: oil, canvas
Location: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada


Vase with Zinnias and Geraniums (F241) reflects the influence of Adolphe Monticelli (1824–1886) in its vivid color and impasto paint. Van Gogh admired, and later collected, Monticelli's work.[43] Van Gogh had been introduced by his brother Theo to Monticelli's still life work with flowers in Paris. He admired Monticelli's use of color as an expansion of Delacroix's theories of color and contrast. Secondly he admired the effect Monticelli created by heavy application of paint called "impasto". It was partially Monticelli, from Marseilles, who inspired Van Gogh's southerly move to Provence in 1888. He felt such kinship for the man, and desire to emulate his style, that he wrote in a letter to his sister Wil that he felt as if he were "Monticelli's son or his brother."[10] The first owner in the provenance of this painting is "C.M. van Gogh Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands", which was owned by Van Gogh's uncle and an art dealer, Cornelius Marinus van Gogh (1824–1908).