Irises: Vincent van Gogh in the Garden

How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!
—Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917), French art critic and the first owner of Irises

Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in the last year of his life, in the garden of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he was recuperating from an attack of mental illness. Although he considered the painting more a study than a finished picture, his brother Theo submitted it to the Salon des Indépendants in September 1889. Its energy and theme—the regenerative p...