Vincent van Gogh - Still Life, Vase with Oleanders and Books 1888
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Still Life, Vase with Oleanders and Books 1888
60x73cm oil/canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
<< Previous G a l l e r y Next >>
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA:
For Van Gogh, oleanders were joyous, life-affirming flowers that bloomed "inexhaustibly" and were always "putting out strong new shoots." In this painting of August 1888 the flowers fill a majolica jug that the artist used for other still lifes made in Arles. They are symbolically juxtaposed with Émile Zola's La joie de vivre, a novel that Van Gogh had placed in contrast to an open Bible in a Nuenen still life of 1885.