Vincent van Gogh’s Brilliant Blue ‘Irises’ Were Originally Purple, New Research Reveals

On May 9, 1889, the day after Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh moved into a psychiatric hospital, he began a painting of some flowers in the institution’s garden. The resulting Irises is now owned by the Getty Center in Los Angeles, where many contemporary viewers have seen the painting’s blue-hued flowers—but they’re seeing a distorted version. As a new exhibition illuminates, van Gogh’s irises were originally purple.

Titled “Ultra-Violet: New Light on Van Gogh’s Irises,” the show is the result of “conservators and scientists working together” to reveal how over time, “light has irrevocably changed some of the colors in Irises,” according to the museum. The show presents the researchers’ analysis alongside a reconstructed version of Irises, which shows what the flowers’ original violet hue may have looked like.

“For years, we have wanted to undertake research on our van Gogh Irises, a painting that is always on view at the Getty,” says museum director Timothy Potts in a statement. “The museum’s closure during the Covid pandemic provided an opportunity to bring the painting into the studio for extensive research and analysis. This exhibition showcases the revelatory results of those studies.”

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

At least one other 19th-century account claims van Gogh’s irises were purple: In September of 1889, art critic Félix Fénéon wrote of van Gogh’s abilities as a colorist, exemplified by the “violet patches” of the flowers in Irises, per the Art Newspaper’s Martin Bailey.

With violet in mind, Getty’s conservators examined the painting with a stereo microscope to glimpse fine details. Then, they scanned Irises with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, a noninvasive tool for determining objects’ elemental composition.

In Irises, the scientists discovered a red pigment called geranium lake, which was commonly used by van Gogh and other late-19th century painters. Van Gogh apparently mixed it with blues to create purple for Irises. But geranium lake is highly sensitive to light.

“That’s why, currently, the irises appear blue, because that red component has faded,” Devi Ormond, a Getty conservator, tells Hyperallergic’s Isa Farfan.

During the scientists’ examination, they also found a piece of pollen embedded in the thick paint covering Irises’ bottom left corner. It’s likely the product of an umbrella pine in the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence hospital’s garden.

The Getty exhibition has borrowed other objects from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to accompany Irises on display, like a replica of the artist’s red box of colored yarn, which he used to explore relationships between hues before painting.

After van Gogh’s brother Theo saw Irises in 1889, he submitted it to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where it was displayed and sold. “[It] strikes 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 Mirbeau, who was the painting’s first owner, echoed such praise: “How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!” he wrote.

Now, visitors to the exhibition will be able to see Irises as it may have looked when van Gogh painted it. As Catherine Patterson, a chemist at the Getty Conservation Institute, says in the statement, “The reconstruction that came from this research allows us to see Irises in a new light and gain a better appreciation of the artist’s intention.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.