One of the great joys of travel for a creative person, is to visit art museums and see works by the masters.
One of the most beloved artists is Van Gogh, who often chose a still life for a subject. His Iris flowers in the sun-drenched colors of the Arles countryside, are some of his most famous works.
In the last few months I was able to visit some Van Gogh Iris paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and last month I visited several art museums in Vienna, Austria…including the Kunst Historisches Museum.
In the Kunst Historisches I was delighted to be allowed to take no-flash photos, and here is a closeup of a still life painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller. The grapes are so juicy that you want to reach out to pick one! Waldmuller’s style is obviously quite different from Van Gogh, but they both had a deep appreciation for the power of complementary colors in their still life paintings.
Van Gogh’s Iris painting was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, with strong outlines, sharp angles, and flat saturated colors.
A few years ago I visited Arles in Provence France, and peeked in at the Saint-Remy asylum where he painted his Irises. It was a bittersweet moment to stand in the courtyard and see the late afternoon sun fall at a sharp angle in the corner of the garden, just as Van Gogh would have seen that bright golden light and those dark purple shadows.
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