Short answer (updated 27 Oct 2026, pass 5): There are three famous Van Gogh iris paintings. The 1889 Irises (Getty, Los Angeles) shows a garden bed at the Saint-Rémy asylum. The two 1890 bouquets are at the Met (pale, once-pink ground) and the Van Gogh Museum (yellow ground). All three looked more violet when he painted them. A red pigment faded, and that left the flowers blue.
The fact gap: three paintings, one name
| Irises, 1889 | Irises, 1890 (pink ground) | Irises, 1890 (yellow ground) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where | Getty, Los Angeles — 90.PA.20 (oil on canvas, 71.1 × 93 cm; signed lower right "Vincent") | The Met, New York — 58.187 (oil on canvas, 73.7 × 92.1 cm) | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam — s0050V1962 |
| Catalogue no. | F 608 / JH 1691 (both cited in the Getty's own bibliography: de la Faille 1928 no. 608; Hulsker 1977 no. 1691) | F 680 / JH 1978 | F 678 / JH 1977 |
| Subject | Irises growing in the asylum garden | Bouquet in a pitcher, wide format | Bouquet in a vase, upright format |
| When | Begun within his first week at Saint-Rémy, May 1889 | May 1890, just before he left the asylum | May 1890 |
| Intended effect | A study from nature (his word) | "Harmonious and soft" greens, pinks, violets | "Terribly disparate complementaries" against "lemon yellow" |
The Getty canvas came first. He started it from life in the asylum garden within a week of arriving in May 1889, and he considered it a study; there are no known drawings for it. The Getty says the cropped, flat-colored composition was probably influenced by Japanese woodblock prints. Theo sent it to the Salon des Indépendants that September and wrote that it "strikes the eye from afar. It is a beautiful study full of air and life." In just under a year at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh made almost 130 paintings. (Getty)
The two bouquets came a year later. In May 1890, shortly before he checked out of the asylum on 16 May, he painted four flower still lifes: two of irises and two of roses, each pair in opposite color schemes. (Met) He described the pair to Theo on Sunday 11 May 1890 (letter 870):
two canvases of large bouquets of violet Irises, one lot against a pink background in which the effect is harmonious and soft through the combination of greens, pinks, violets. On the contrary, the other violet bouquet (ranging up to pure carmine and Prussian blue) standing out against a striking lemon yellow background […] is an effect of terribly disparate complementaries that reinforce each other by their opposition.
Note "pure carmine." He says the flowers ran all the way to red. That is the red you can no longer see. The letter's editors identify the pink-ground canvas as F 680 (now at the Met) and the yellow one as F 678 (now in Amsterdam). (Van Gogh Letters, letter 870)
Why the purple turned blue
Van Gogh mixed his violets from a blue and a red. The red was geranium lake, a pigment made from the synthetic dye eosin, and it fades in daylight. On the Getty canvas, X-ray fluorescence maps found bromine, a marker for geranium lake, alongside cobalt in many petals. The red has mostly gone and the blue remains. (Getty) On the Met bouquet the same fading turned the pink ground nearly white and pushed the violets toward blue. (Met; npj Heritage Science 2017) The Van Gogh Museum says its yellow-ground irises have also shifted from purple to blue. (VGM)
Three details worth looking at (Met, 1890)
- The "white" background. Look closely and faint pink strokes survive near the edges. A conservation sample from the left edge confirmed eosin red mixed into what now reads as white. (npj 2017)
- The outlines. The petal contours are Prussian blue mixed with the same fugitive red, so even the drawing has cooled. (npj 2017)
- The pitcher. It's his washbasin pitcher, and the wide canvas lets the bouquet sprawl and sway. Set that against the stiff, upright Amsterdam version. (Met exhibition)
Context
- In the same letter he wrote that the canvases would take a whole month to dry and that an attendant at the asylum would send them on after he left. (Letter 870, older translation no. 633)
- He left the bouquets in Saint-Rémy to dry. They reached him in Auvers in late June 1890, about a month before he died. (Met exhibition)
- His mother owned the Met Irises until her death in 1907. Adele R. Levy gave it to the Met in 1958, accession 58.187 (credit line: Gift of Adele R. Levy, 1958). (Met)
- Size depends on which Getty record you read. Its vocabulary record (CONA) gives 71.1 × 93 cm unframed, and its cataloguing guide uses 71 × 93 cm. An older Getty collection page listed 74.3 × 94.3 cm; the records don't say why they differ. Either way the garden canvas is about the same size as the Met bouquet. (Getty CONA; Getty CDWA; Getty collection page, 2017 archive)
- The Getty's first owner was the critic Octave Mirbeau, one of Van Gogh's earliest champions. He wrote: "How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!" (Getty)
- After Mirbeau, the Getty's provenance record runs: sold to Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1912; by 1925 with Jacques Doucet, then his widow from 1929; sold to Jacques Seligmann et Fils, 1938/39; consigned to M. Knoedler & Co., New York, and sold to Joan Whitney Payson in 1947; inherited by her son John Whitney Payson in 1975; sold at Sotheby's New York on 11 November 1987, lot 25, to Alan Bond; returned to Sotheby's in 1990; and sold to the Getty by private treaty that year. (Getty collection data, provenance, read 28 Oct 2026)
Which one to hang
Our print is the 1890 Met bouquet, the pink-ground one. Pick it if you want the calm version: a pale ground, a wide format that sits well over a sofa or bed, and blues that won't fight a room. If you want drama, the yellow Amsterdam canvas is the opposite mood. → Irises, 1890 fine art print
Same palette, same spring:
- Almond Blossom, 1890: painted months earlier in the same asylum, also blue and white.
- Water Lilies, 1906: another quiet violet-blue field.
FAQ
Where is the Irises painting? The 1889 garden version is at the Getty in Los Angeles. The 1890 bouquets are at the Met in New York and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Were Van Gogh's irises originally purple? Yes, mostly violet. He mixed them with a red that faded. Getty and Met technical studies confirm it.
What did Van Gogh say about them? To Theo, 11 May 1890: the pink-ground bouquet is "harmonious and soft," and the yellow one is "terribly disparate complementaries that reinforce each other by their opposition." (Letter 870)
How was the 1889 Irises painted? In oil, with brush and palette knife, according to the Getty's catalogue record. It is signed "Vincent" at lower right.
Is the Met Irises background white? It was painted pink. Most of the pink has faded.
Which Irises paintings are the famous ones? The three above: the 1889 Getty garden and the two 1890 bouquets at the Met and the Van Gogh Museum.
Sources
- Getty — Irises, 1889 (collection page)
- Getty Museum collection data (Linked Art JSON) — Irises 90.PA.20: provenance, inscription, bibliography (CC BY 4.0 text), read 28 Oct 2026
- Getty CONA record 700002212 — Irises, 90.PA.20 (dimensions, materials incl. palette knife)
- Getty, Categories for the Description of Works of Art — Irises cataloguing example (71 × 93 cm, brush and palette knife)
- Getty collection page, 2017 archive (signature, accession, 74.3 × 94.3 cm)
- Getty News — investigating the color change of Irises
- Getty — Ultra Violet exhibition notes (PDF)
- The Met — Irises, 1890, accession 58.187
- The Met — Van Gogh: Irises and Roses (2015 exhibition)
- Van Gogh Museum — Irises, 1890 (s0050V1962)
- npj Heritage Science (2017) — red lakes in Irises and Roses
- Van Gogh to Theo, Saint-Rémy, 11 May 1890 — letter 870 (Van Gogh Letters, Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING). Quoted from the current English translation; catalogue numbers F 680 / F 678 are from the letter's notes.
- Older translation, letter 633 (Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, ed. Harrison): drying and shipping of the canvases
Quotations are short and attributed. Everything else is paraphrased.