The paint’s pigment faded over many years, which is why the flowers are bright blue today. But they were already “ultra-violet”.
On May 9, 1889, Vincent van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother Theo. It was the first day I spent in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in France.
“Little by little, I may come to consider madness as a disease like any other”, he wrote, adding that he was working on two works: “violet lilies and a lilac bush… Two themes taken from the garden.” This resulted in the picture Irises or, in Portuguese, Lilies.
As , there was at least one other 19th-century account that guaranteed that van Gogh’s lilies were, after all, purple: In September 1889, art critic Félix Fénéon wrote about van Gogh’s skills as a colorist, exemplified by the “violet spots” of flowers in Irises, according to Martin Bailey of .
Furthermore, the lilies found in the garden of the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Hospital have a purple.
It was after considering this possibility based on the author’s own letter that the conservators at the Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, USA, examined the painting with a stereo microscope to observe details. Afterwards, they analyzed Irises with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, a non-invasive tool that allowed them to determine the elemental composition of objects.
Getty Centre
The real lilies of the hospital where the artist was admitted
In the painting, the researchers noticed the presence of a red pigment that is quite common in van Gogh’s paintings: the geranium lake.
But, as Smithsonian explains, even though the artist mixed this component with blue to create the originally purple color of Irises, This substance is very sensitive to light, which is why it faded over time, leaving only blue.
“That’s why lilies now look blue, because the red component has faded,” he says. Devi Ormond, conservator of the museum, at .
Now, the Getty has organized an exhibition that tells the story of the painting. Catherine Patterson, chemistry at the Getty Conservation Institute, says that “the reconstruction resulting from this research now allows us to see Iris in a new light and better appreciate the artist’s intention.”
