Vase of Roses by Van Gogh in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2008

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)

Title: Roses

Date: 1890

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 36 5/8 x 29 1/8 in. (93 x 74 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1993, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002

Accession Number: 1993.400.5

Gallery Label:

In May 1890, just before his departure from the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted an exceptional group of four still lifes, to which both the Museum's "Roses" and "Irises" (58.187) belong. Striking in their facility of execution and elegant simplicity of design, these bouquets and their counterparts—an upright composition of irises (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and a horizontal composition of roses (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)—were conceived as a decorative ensemble, like the suite of sunflowers he had made earlier in Arles. Traces of pink along the tabletop and rose petals in the present painting, which have faded over time, offer a faint reminder of the formerly vivid "canvas of pink roses against a yellow green background in a green vase."


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...