The episodes of self-mutilation and hospitalization that followed his quarrel with Paul Gauguin finally prompted Van Gogh to have himself admitted in May 1889 to the asylum Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Despite occasional, disturbing recurrences, Van Gogh produced almost 130 paintings during his year of recuperation in Saint-Rémy. Although he was not permitted to leave the grounds for the first month, the overgrown and somewhat untended garden of the asylum provided ample material for his paintings, which he worked, as was his practice, directly from life. In the first week, Van Gogh reported to his brother Theo that he had begun work on "some violet irises."

That Van Gogh was deeply affected by the regenerative powers of nature comes across clearly even in this limited view. There is a muscularity to the blue-violet blooms supported on their sturdy stems amid swaying, pointy-tipped leaves that almost forcefully push their way through the red earth. Even the contemporary critic Félix Fénéon described the Irises in anthropomorphic terms, although he saw destruction rather than renewal in the image: "The 'Irises' violently slash into long strips, their violet petals on sword-like leaves."

Incorporating lessons learned from Pointillist color theory, Impressionist subject matter, and Japanese woodblock printmakers, Van Gogh distills the garden patch into patterned areas of vivid color. The composition, with its impastoed brushwork intact and unfaded, is bisected horizontally by waving bands of cool green leaves. Above, the varied clumps of violet petals (set off by a lone white iris) are placed in contrast over the warm green ground of the distant, sunlit meadow. Below, the same violet shades reverberate in juxtaposition with the red-brown of the Provençal soil, built up with striated parallel brushstrokes.

The cropped nature of the composition most likely led Van Gogh to describe the Getty canvas as a study after nature rather than a finished painting in a letter to his brother. Nevertheless, among the eleven canvases he received in July, Theo chose only the Irises to accompany the earlier Starry Night (New York, Museum of Modern Art) as Van Gogh's submission to the Salon des Indépendants in September 1889.

Signature(s): Lower right: "Vincent" (underlined) 

Object Number: 90.PA.20 

Provenance:

- 1892 Julien Tanguy (Père)1825 - 1894(Paris, France) sold to Octave Mirbeau, 1892. 1892 - 1905 Octave Mirbeau1848 - 1917(Paris, France) sold to Auguste Pellerin, 1905. 1905 - Auguste Pellerin1852 - 1929(Paris, France) - Galerie Bernheim Jeune(Paris, France) 1925 - 1929 Jacques DoucetFrench, 1853 - 1929(Paris, France; Neuilly sur Seine, France) by inheritance to his wife, Mme. Jacques Doucet, 1929. 1929 - 1938/1939 Mme Jacques Doucet(Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) sold to Jacques Seligmann et Fils, 1938/1939. 1938/1939 - 1945/1946 Jacques Seligmann et Fils(Paris, France; New York, New York) sold to M. Knoedler & Co., possibly 1945/1946. 1945/1946 - 1947 M. Knoedler & Co. (New York)(London, England; New York, New York; Paris, France) sold to Joan Whitney Payson, 1947. Source: GRI, M. Knoedler & Co. records, commission book 4, p. 76, no. 2780; GRI, M. Knoedler & Co. records, sales book 14, p. 318, no. CA 2780. 1947 - 1975 Joan Whitney Payson1903 - 1975 by inheritance to her son, John Whitney Payson, 1975. 1975 - 1987 John Whitney Payson1940 - 2016 [sold, Sotheby's, New York, November 11, 1987, lot 25, to Alan Bond.] 1987 - 1990 Alan Bond(Perth, Australia) returned to Sotheby's (New York), 1990. 1990 Sotheby's (New York) sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum by private treaty sale, 1990.