Edouard
Manet
Vincent van Gogh Flowers were the final subject Manet painted shortly before his death. He depicted them as beautiful, fragile things that reflected the inevitable transitoriness of his own life, his own imminent end. In an even clearer way, van Gogh - likely the most outstanding flower painter of modernism - treated flowers as true self-portraits that evoked all the drama of his existence in an exemplary fashion. In his "Blossoming Chestnut Branch" from the E.G. Bührle Foundation Collection - one of van Gogh's most puissant late paintings - the hypnotic power of blossoms on the verge of wilting reached a final apotheosis.
Edouard Manet
Flowers in a Crystal Vase, ca. 1882 Copyright
Vincent van Gogh
Blossoming Chestnut Branches, 1890,
Oil on canvas Copyright
