Irises

Van Gogh painted it in May 1889, soon after he entered the asylum at Saint-Rémy, working from the garden there. The flowers are seen close and cut off at the edges, as in the Japanese prints he collected, and one white iris stands out among the blue. His brother Theo showed it at the Salon des Indépendants that September. In 1987 it sold at auction for 53.9 million dollars, then the highest price ever paid for a painting, to a buyer who could not pay for it. The Getty bought it in 1990.

Medium

Oil on canvas

Size

94.3 x 74.3 cm

Where

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Photo from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.