Vincent van Gogh’s brilliant blue ‘irises’ were originally purple, new research shows

On May 9, 1889, the day after the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh After moving to a psychiatric hospital, he started painting some flowers in the institute’s garden. The result Irises is now owned by the Getty Center in Los Angeles, where many contemporary viewers have seen the painting’s blue-colored flowers, but they see a distorted version. As a new exhibition highlights, Van Gogh’s irises were originally purple.

Titled “Ultraviolet: new light on Van Gogh’s irises‘, the show is the result of ‘collaboration between conservationists and scientists’ to reveal how ‘light has irrevocably changed some colors in nature over time’. Irises“, the museum said. The show presents the researchers’ analysis alongside a reconstructed version of Irisesshowing what the original violet hue of the flowers may have looked like.

“We have wanted to do research into our Van Gogh for years Irisesa painting that is always on display at the Getty,” said museum director Timothy Potts in a statement. “The closure of the museum during the Covid pandemic provided the opportunity to bring the painting to the studio for extensive research and analysis. This exhibition shows the revealing results of those studies.”

The project was prompted in part by Van Gogh’s own writings. On his first full day in the hospital near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, where he would spend an entire year, after a unstable period in which he cut off his left ear – the artist wrote a letter to his brotherart dealer Theo. In it, Van Gogh expresses optimism about his decision to come to the hospital, that “little by little I can come to regard madness as a disease like any other.” He also notes that he is working on two paintings: “violet irises and a lilac bush. …Two subjects from the garden.”

At least one other 19th-century account claims that Van Gogh’s irises were purple: in September 1889, art critic wrote Felix Feneon wrote about Van Gogh’s abilities as a colorist, illustrated by the ‘purple spots’ of the flowers in Irisesaccording to the Art newspaperby Martin Bailey.

With violet in mind, Getty’s conservators examined the painting with a stereo microscope to pick out fine details. Then they scanned Irises of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopya non-invasive tool for determining the elemental composition of objects.

In Irisesscientists discovered a red pigment called geranium lakewhich was widely used by Van Gogh and other late 19th century painters. Van Gogh apparently mixed it with blue to create purple Irises. But geranium lake is very sensitive to light.

“That’s why the irises look blue right now, because that red component has faded,” says Devi Ormond, a Getty curator. Hyperallergicby Isa Farfan.

During the scientists’ investigation, they also found a piece of pollen embedded in the thick layer of paint Irises‘bottom left corner. It is probably the product of an umbrella pine in the garden of the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence hospital.

Other objects have been borrowed from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to accompany the Getty exhibition Irises on display, as a replica of the artist’s red box with colored yarnwith which he explored the relationships between shades before he started painting.

After Van Gogh’s brother saw Theo Irises in 1889 he submitted it to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where it was exhibited and sold. “[It] catches the eye from afar,” wrote Theo in a letter to his brother. “It is a beautiful study full of air and life.” The French critic Octave Mirbeauwho was the first owner of the painting, echoed such praise: “How well he understood the exquisite nature of flowers!” he wrote.

Now visitors to the exhibition can see it Irises as it may have looked when Van Gogh painted it. If Catherine Pattersona chemist at the Getty Conservation Institute, said in the statement: “The reconstruction resulting from this study allows us to see Irises in a new light and gain a better appreciation of the artist’s intention.”