Vase with Zinnias and Other Flowers

Vincent van Gogh

Contemporary-Art.org
Keywords: VaseZinniasOtherFlowers

Work Overview

Bowl with Zinnias and Other Flowers also Vase with Zinnias and Other Flowers
1886
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).[43]


Bowl with Zinnias and Other Flowers (F251), painted within days of Vase with Zinnias and Geraniums (F241), is evidence of Van Gogh's transition to a lighter color palette. Picking up elements of Impressionism Van Gogh painted with a more vigorous brushstroke, with thick application of paint, called "impasto" which created a three-dimensional relief.